


To know the secrets of existence (start with the mysteries of the heart)

by stellarel



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Anxiety, College AU, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Human AU, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Violence, Mutual Pining, References to Depression, Slow Burn, everybody lives au, mentions of bullying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 30,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25284490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarel/pseuds/stellarel
Summary: Yasmin Khan goes to university with one goal in mind; trying to escape her old life. The universe, however, starts throwing curve balls her way - mainly in the form of one eccentric neighbor called Theta Lungbarrow and her colorful group of friends - and Yaz soon learns that maybe this new life of hers is much more than just an escape. Maybe it's something much, much better; a life she actually wants.
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 81
Kudos: 113





	1. It's time to begin, isn't it?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I am officially back on my bullshit. This fic has been simmering in my brain for a while now, and I finally got the beginning in order, so here I am, presenting to you: the college AU. The human AU. The everybody lives AU. The gang's all here, babes. There's zero space shenanigans, just an old dorm, new friends, and some humany wumany feelings.  
> This is a happy story. This is a story about love and life and healing and friendship and all the good stuff. But there will also be some heavier themes too, because that's just the kind of person I am. And we all know that even as a regular-ish human, the Doctor is going to have some problems.  
> But don't worry, only happy endings in this house.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz gets to campus, meets her new roommate, and starts her new life.

Yasmin Khan loved her family. She really did.

But it also felt _really_ good to finally move out and live on her own.

The new dorm room was small, and kind of had a weird smell to it, and sure, she shared it with some other student, but it was _hers_ in a way no place had ever been before. And here, she wouldn't have to worry about Sonya, or her parents, bursting through the door at any minute, bothering her with this or that, insisting she do the dishes or telling her to sit up straight, asking about where she was going, who she was texting, and the like. Here, she was her own boss and didn't have to answer to anyone. 

Well, except for maybe some professors to an extent, but that didn't count.

Here, she could finally breathe.

(Metaphorically, at least. In reality, the air quality wasn't the best - the whole place was very stuffy, in that way old buildings often were).

The apartment was mostly furnished for them - old furniture, worn down and mismatching, but it was better than nothing. There was a large wooden table, a faded old sofa, and some bookshelves. The whole room had a distinctly _library_ feel to it, despite the fact that there wasn't a single book in sight (she figured that that must be all the old wood and the dust that covered every visible surface).

It wasn't the fanciest apartment she'd seen.

But this was far away from her old home, and therefore it was, by default, good.

There's a weird, light buzzing in her lungs - part excitement and part nervousness - and Yaz can't quite decide whether she should lean into it or ignore it.

Everything was new.

And strange. 

And _wonderful_.

This was the new beginning she had been dreaming about - here, nobody knew her. Nobody expected anything from her. And most importantly, nobody was out to get her. 

It was a fresh start, in a way, being just another anonymous no-name nobody in a place this big. Here, she was just another student, lost, trying to find her place. 

She had wanted to escape her old life for quite some time now, and this was _it_. She had made it to the other side, even when it had sometimes felt like she never would.

And she hoped, with all her might, that this would be a change for the better. 

She puts down her bags and walks straight over to the large window in the living room (slash kitchen slash foyer slash common area, or whatever the vague main room of the apartment was supposed to be). It takes her a moment to figure out how to open the window - the hinges are old and kinda stuck and there's so much dust she can taste it in the air, and it floats around her in small twirls as she pushes open the old, faded yellow curtains. 

The mid-morning sunlight floods into the room, and the dust settles. Yaz leans out of the window slightly to scope out the view - their room is on the second floor, and overlooking a grassy courtyard. For a moment, she wonders if she'll become one of those people you always saw on typical university ads; sitting on the grass, half studying and half dreaming, having the time of their lives here. 

She could be anyone, now. A whole new Yaz; whoever she wanted to be. 

She leans back into the dusty warm safety of the room, wipes her hands off on her jeans - and immediately hears her mum's voice in the back of her head telling her not to do that - promptly ignores this, picks up her bags, and ventures into her new bedroom.

It's not big, and it's not very fancy, but it's _hers_ , so she loves it. There's a bed (small), a desk (also small), and a shelf that looked like it would probably fall down if she dared to put anything on it. A window that lets in the warm sunlight, and an old wooden closet for clothes. The walls are off-white and spattered with small stains and scratches here and there, evidence that countless other kids had lived here before her. 

Yaz smiles.

She spends a moment unpacking her bags - settling her stuff down on one place and then moving it again, trying to figure out the best places for everything, replacing the pre-existing bedding with her own pillow and blanket and mustard-yellow sheets, quietly wondering if she should buy a new mattress, too. 

She sticks a picture she'd taken with Sonya to the wall above her desk (she'd feel bad if she didn't, not that she'd admit that to her sister in a million years) and another one from her nan's birthday last year. They're a much needed pop of color in the mostly white room, and for a moment, Yaz dares to hope that maybe she'll have new pictures to add to the wall, eventually. New happy memories, from this new era in her life. 

Not quite sure what to do next, Yaz starts unpacking her clothes, and briefly wonders if she should change - she _had_ just spent several hours traveling in these clothes, and even though it didn't technically do any damage to the clothes themselves, they still felt a bit stuffy. That's just what happens, right?

Then, she hears the door of the apartment open with a heavy _click,_ and creak open.

"Hello?" Someone calls out from the main room, interrupting Yaz's quiet internal debate about what to wear. 

The voice is soon accompanied by footsteps, and Yaz gathers herself, and answers, puts down the shirt she'd been holding and walks into the living room. 

The other girl grins, seeing her, and it's a wide, toothy, infectious grin. "Hi! I'm Bill. Bill Potts. Roommate?"

She looks _nice_ , and _friendly_ , and _kind_ , and Yaz instantly hopes that maybe Bill will be her first friend in this place. She had been nervous about what kind of a roommate she would get, because really, she didn't have the best track record with schoolmates. But seeing Bill, some of her anxiety instantly settles.

Yaz smiles at her, and reaches out her hand for a handshake. "Roommate." 

(She isn't sure if a handshake is the right protocol for meeting your new roommate, but that's what her brain offers and she doesn't know enough to argue, so she goes with it). 

"Yasmin Khan. Yaz to my friends."

Bill shifts her weight from one side to the other, puts down the cardboard box she'd been holding, and shakes her hand. And then she instantly does a small twirl to look around the room. "Nice place," she comments, "was expecting something a bit more modern, but this definitely has character. Love the windows, very dramatic." 

She crouches down to open one of her boxes, and unpacks a plant of some sort. A green vine-type one with large leafs. 

Bill walks towards the window, looking around, presumably looking for a good place for her plant. 

For a second, Yaz is almost jealous of how at _home_ Bill already looks - she moves around the space like she belongs here. Confidently. Yaz felt like her own confidence has never been as effortless or solid; it had always been a bit more aggressive, a bit more hollow, like a shield or a mask or an armor. 

"You're not allergic, are you?" Bill asks, turning around to meet Yaz's eyes momentarily.

Yaz shakes her head. "Nah."

"Good." Bill breathes, visibly relieved.

"Do you keep a lot of plants?" Yaz asks, trying to shoot for some light small talk, not quite sure how to handle this whole roommate situation. She had never lived with anyone besides her parents and Sonya, and, well - you couldn't just jump straight into that dynamic with a total stranger.

"Nah, just this one, for now." Bill answers lightheartedly, setting the plant down on a shelf near the window. "Figured I'd see if I can keep this one alive, then I might get some more. They just bring a bit more life to the room, you know?" 

Yaz nods, considering this. Bill was right - the plant did make the room instantly look a little more home-y.

"So, Yaz." Bill continues after a moment, walking around the sofa and going to pick up some of her stuff. "I just I ran into this one cute girl on my way here, and she invited me to a party later tonight. Wanna come? Or do you have plans already?"

Yaz processes this for a second. She'd figured parties were a part of the whole _university experience_ , but that didn't mean she had been mentally prepared to go to one on her first night here.

Truth be told, what she'd pictured tonight would be like was more along the lines of 'takeout and TV', but hey. She _was_ here to start a new life. 

Who knows. Maybe this new Yaz was a party girl. 

The old Yaz hadn't been - she'd spent most of her time trying to _avoid_ any unnecessary social contact with her peers, but things were different now. No-one knew here here. Here, she could go to parties and be herself without someone instantly attacking her. 

Probably.

For someone who had been as excited to leave her old life behind and jump headfirst into the unknown as she had, Yaz felt surprisingly _unsure_. 

Despite her best efforts to embrace it, the unknown still somehow managed to make an echo of worry line the insides of her lungs.

She does her best to swallow it, shove it to the side.

"Well, my plans so far extend all the way to lunch, so..." She smiles, and gives Bill half a shrug. "Sounds like it could be fun."

Bill grins at her.

Yaz thinks that maybe she really could be her first friend here.

And it seemed like a pretty good start.


	2. Where the lost get found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing: new friends, possibly some new enemies, and one (1) disaster human.

The party took place in some poor guy's house, a stone's throw from the campus. It was packed full of people, the music was loud enough that they could easily hear it outside, and approaching the house, Yaz could feel the beat resonate in her rib cage.

(This felt like it couldn’t have been good for her health at all, but hey. Neither was life, in the end).

She walked forwards regardless, and Bill looped and arm around her elbow with a smile on her face.

Inside, there were flashing lights blinking in tune with the music, illuminating their surroundings in unnaturally bright shades of pinks, blues, oranges and yellows. The light bled through the windows, painting the otherwise dark yard in vivid colors. 

Yaz could hear some of the people inside singing along to a song she couldn't recognize, but if she had to hazard a guess, the lyrics were probably either about partying, sex, or both.

The whole thing was pretty much exactly what Yaz had expected.

Pretty soon after arriving, Bill disappears into the crowd with some girl, presumably the same one who had invited her, leaving Yaz alone in the sea of people. They _had_ originally made plans to stick together, but despite the social anxiety that was starting to creep to the surface, Yaz wasn't about to interrupt whatever Bill had going on with the girl. They seemed to be getting along well, and Yaz could survive a party on her own - she had survived worse, for sure.

So, in the middle of the thumping music, sweaty teenagers, and dim lights that flashed neon every few seconds, Yaz stands tall and does her best to look like she belongs there.

(Dressed in black save for the bright red leather jacket, and with her hair in sleek braids, she thought she looked the part, for sure, but still didn't quite manage to feel it. She ignored this the best she could - she had gotten used to it by now anyways, it was always there, nestled to the back of her head, the endless _you don't belong here, they don't want you here_. She does her best to ignore this).

Being alone in a place like this made her feel _vulnerable_ , somehow - and even though the room was full of people who probably didn't even notice her, she still felt like everyone was watching.

She knows that's probably not true, but still couldn't quite shake the feeling creeping up the back of her neck.

Despite not knowing anyone there, she scans the crowd for a familiar face.

Or maybe it's to make sure she _couldn't_ find a familiar face - anyone from her old school, her old town - if there was anyone there that she already knew, she'd like to avoid them, thanks, and exit the room as soon as possible.

She knows this is not very likely to happen, but, well. Old habits, and all.

Yaz is stuck in the weird limbo between simultaneously hoping that no-one there recognizes her and wishing that she had someone to hang out with. Parties were much less intimidating when you were with somebody, after all.

There were a lot of other people who look absolutely alone and lost there, too - probably new students, just like her and Bill. This does make her feel a little bit better about the whole situation, but she still wasn’t comfortable, not really. So, not quite knowing what to do, she spends a moment just marinading in her own anxiety.

When this leads to exactly zero results, she goes out to get a drink - mainly just to have something to hold, not as much to have something to drink.

Turns out, getting in and out of the kitchen is...a struggle.

And she's also starting to realize that despite the chilly night air and gloomy weather, _maybe_ a leather jacket was a bit too much. At least if you're going to spend time inside a house that's probably housing at least 200% over it's maximum capacity of people.

Because there are people _everywhere_ , and they're all dancing and stumbling and grinding against each other, and briefly Yaz wonders how much alcohol she'd have to consume to end up like that.

The answer is, probably, more than she felt comfortable with.

Hopefully.

After successfully getting into the kitchen, acquiring herself a drink, proceeding to feel like she's suffocating and sweating more than she’d like, she gives in and just decides to go outside for a bit. To breathe. That's not too weird, right? 

So she elbows her way out of the house and into the porch, where there was _fresh air_ , and _space_ and _less people_.

Yaz takes a deep breath, and leans against a railing, letting the world settle around her, the cool air sharp but calming on her skin.

The music is still loud, but it’s muffled by the walls of the house, now, and the lights are still flashing, but now, she can only see the dim after-effects of it, the halos dancing in the dark yard. And the temperature outside is also _much_ more comfortable than the one inside.

"Couldn't take the greenhouse gasses in there either?" Someone asks, and she turns to look at the speaker.

It's a boy with big, dark eyes and clear, dark skin, and he's sitting on the porch steps, leaning back on his elbows.

"It's probably a health risk, breathing the air in there." He continues, and there's something vaguely familiar about him, but Yaz can't quite put her finger on it.

Maybe she'd seen him in one of the orientation things.

She smiles at him politely, not really knowing what else to do. "You're probably right. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone passed out in there."

Yaz occupies herself by taking a sip of her drink, and trying not to grimace at the taste. It was supposed to be mostly lemonade, but her taste buds begged to differ.

“Oh, I bet someone already has.” He answers, smiling back at her. "I'm Ryan. You a new student too?"

Yaz tilts her head at this, and takes another look at the boy, this time less dismissive.

"Ryan?" She repeats, ignoring his question completely, and squinting her eyes at him a little. "Not Ryan Sinclair?"

The boy, Ryan, possibly Sinclair, stares at her. "Yeah?"

Yaz grins, thanking the universe silently in her head. She _had_ set out to escape her old life and her old hometown, but the thought of an old friend and a familiar face still somehow made her feel a lot more comfortable in the otherwise completely unfamiliar environment.

And besides, Ryan had always been one of the good ones.

"Yasmin Khan." She introduces herself, and watches the recognition spread over his face.

"No way! Yaz? From school?"

She nods, and smiles. "Yeah. Yaz from school."

Then she crosses her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow. "Why'd you think I was new?"

"You've got that deer in the headlights look going on." He says with half a shrug.

Yaz sits down next to him, leaning to one of the pillars on the porch. "What are you studying?"

"Trying to become a mechanic." He answers casually. "You?"

"Criminal justice."

Ryan nods and leans back to look at her. Then, after a moment, "So you gonna become Batman when you graduate?"

Yaz laughs. For the first time since arriving at this party, at this school, Yaz _laughs_. And she feels comfortable, and Ryan grins at her, and quietly Yaz thinks that maybe she shouldn't try to get rid of _everything_ from her old life, after all. 

And then two kids crash through the door, bursting the little bubble of comfort and calmness and familiarity Yaz had found herself in.

Ryan and Yaz both flinch, and Yaz automatically stands up to move out of the way when the teenagers - two boys - stumble to the porch, both obviously more or less drunk, and one of them in the middle of some rage-filled monologue.

The taller one pushes the other one to the ground, and he lands with a too-loud thud and a quiet whimper.

Ryan scrambles up too, backing away into the lawn, and watches the scene unfold with wide eyes and a surprised _"Whoah"._

Then three things happen at once.

Yaz takes a step towards the boys, yelling out a quite aggressive " _Hey_!"

The taller boy smiles with a sickening sort of glee.

And someone falls through the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter: the disaster human.  
> How else did you think they were going to meet?


	3. Quarter past midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing: the disaster human.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah.  
> It's her.

Ryan looks at the scene with his eyes wide, as if momentarily frozen in time.

Yaz does her best to just register what the hell is happening.

The blonde who had just fallen through the ceiling - or upon closer inspection, through some kind of flimsy wooden extension of the ceiling - groans, and scrambles up from the ground. She stumbles a little, but eventually finds her footing.

Everyone, including the boys who had been about a hair's length from a straight-up fistfight, stares.

She's wearing a black suit that looks way too formal for a party like this, and her hair - golden, with some brown showing at the roots - is strewn all over the place. Which probably isn't surprising, given the situation, but for some reason Yaz's brain makes a mental note of it anyways.

After brushing off the initial shock, surprise, and worry, Yaz takes a step towards her. "You alright?" She asks, quietly wondering what the parameters for _'alright'_ were if you've just fallen through the roof at a party.

The blonde looks around the scene, seemingly a little disoriented but otherwise mostly fine. Her eyes don't quite meet Yaz's, but she waves a hand in her general direction dismissively. "I'm fine. Totally. Brilliant. A-okay."

She says it like there’s a caps lock period in between each word, and somehow it makes it sound just that much more like a lie. Yaz furrows her brows, debating the validity of the statement in her head.

"Now, what's going on here?" The blonde asks, spinning around to face the two boys from earlier - one of whom still looked like he was ready to start throwing punches any second, and this had all just been delayed slightly by the surprise interruption.

"That's none of your business." He says, his voice full of invisible venom.

The blonde tilts her head a little, completely unbothered. "Are you sure about that? Because if you're about to beat up that kid, I believe it's my civil duty to intervene."

"Or you could just _for once_ mind your own business and stay out of it."

"You and I both know that's not going to happen, Tim." She says, with a weird casualness in her voice.

She sounds weirdly _bored_ with the situation, as if this was a conversation she'd had countless times before. Maybe she had - Yaz wouldn't know, either way. The blonde is standing in a way that made her look at least a head taller than she actually was, and she seemed to be confident in a very casual, effortless way, too - in a way that gave her an instant air of authority. 

The boy -Tim- squints his eyes at her. And then, after a few seconds, he apparently decides to pick his battles, takes a deep breath, shoves the other boy away from him in an exaggerated gesture, and walks back inside the house, grumbling something to himself.

The blonde turns to look at the other boy, and pushes her hands in her pockets, her stance much more casual now. "You okay?" She asks, and Yaz quietly thinks to herself that _she_ is the one they should all be worried about, probably, and not the boy. 

"Yeah. Thank you." The boy says, scrambling up from the ground. "I'm just gonna...go." He mumbles, and disappears out into the driveway quietly.

After a few seconds of silence, the blonde shifts her weight from one side to the other. "Good! Crisis averted, then." She says, and it sounds like it's more to herself than to anyone else.

"Dude, what just happened?" Ryan asks, the surprise evident in his voice.

The blonde tilts her head a little. "Well, it seems like Tim was about to beat up that other kid for whatever ridiculous reason he had this time." She shrugs.

"No, I mean what happened to _you_! Mate, you fell through the _roof_!"

"Technically, I fell through the -" She glances up, "-I think that's technically more of a canopy." She says, like this is a totally normal situation. Just another day for her. Nothing out of the ordinary.

" _Why_ did you fall through the canopy?" Yaz tries, still trying to wrap her mind around the whole thing.

"Well, it obviously wasn't as structurally sound as I thought it would be." She says, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

Neither Yaz or Ryan have a response for that - they have questions, many of them, but right now it seemed like getting any sort of satisfactory answers wouldn't be on the table.

The blonde spins around, and about halfway, she stumbles. "Oh crap." She mutters quietly under her breath, and sits down very ungracefully. (It's more of a half-coordinated fall, really, in Yaz's opinion).

"You alright?" Yaz repeats, sitting down next to her cautiously.

The blonde only gives her a quiet groan as a response. Then, after a moment, a very unconvincing, "I'm fine."

Yaz and Ryan share a glance over her head, neither of them sure what to do.

"Maybe we should take you home?" Yaz tries carefully. "Or maybe a hospital."

She didn't look _injured_ , but, well, she wasn't exactly in prime condition either.

"I don't need a hospital." She grumbles, rubbing her eyes tiredly and letting her shoulders slump. "I'm fine."

Yaz takes a deep breath, and looks over at Ryan, who only gives her a vague shrug.

"Where do you live?" Yaz eventually asks, hoping that this would be the right call. That the blonde wasn't secretly harboring a concussion or anything.

"No." She answers, finite and firm.

"What?" Yaz squints her eyes at the blonde, confused, worried, and now also a bit frustrated.

The blonde is silent for a moment, and then she licks her lips, and takes a deep breath. Shakes her head a bit.

"It's definitely...in a house. A brown one."

"Yeah, that really narrows it down, thanks." Yaz says, in a tone that's maybe a little more sarcastic than necessary.

"There's...stairs."

Yaz sighs.

"And windows! And definitely also a door."

Yaz turns her eyes to the sky for a moment, thinking things over. Then, she takes a deep breath and very carefully offers, "You could crash at our place. It's not far. I'm sure my roommate wouldn't mind."

The blonde hums a little, considering this. "Where's that?"

"13C. The-"

"No, no. I don't trust any place that's just letters and numbers." She interrupts, and Yaz just squints her eyes at her, confused.

"...That's just our flat number. It's in the Parks building." She continues, slowly, hoping to drive home the point that she, and their apartment, could both be trusted.

The blonde is quiet, and with the way she's leaning on her knees, for a second Yaz wonders if she's fallen asleep. Or passed out, maybe.

"It's really close." Yaz continues, hoping to convince her - she didn't know this girl, sure, but she also didn't want to leave her alone like this, possibly hurt and lost and apparently with no clear memory of where she lived. No, she couldn’t just _leave_ her. Solidarity and all.

The blonde lifts her head up, and turns to look at Yaz. "Can we stop at Subway on the way? I'm really craving a sandwich right now."

For some reason, this felt like a bit of calmness in the middle of everything that had happened that night. Maybe it's that she had agreed to go with them - it made Yaz feel less unsure about the whole situation, and for a single heartbeat, she just sits there, in the moment. She nods carefully, and the blonde smiles at her, the multi-color lights illuminating her features with every color of the rainbow.

"I want the chicken teriyaki." Ryan says, raising his hand.

Yaz takes a breath, stands up, and offers the blonde her hand, in an attempt to help her up. She doesn't take it, and instead stumbles up on her own, almost falling over in the process. Yaz _almost_ rolls her eyes at the stubborn independence, but settles for a quiet sigh instead.

In the Subway checkout line, Yaz is quietly horrified by the mix of things the blonde wants in her sandwich. She doesn't say anything, because commenting on people's eating habits is rude, but _still_. There's things in there that shouldn't be inside a sandwich - including but not limited to, a chocolate chip cookie.

Yaz takes the opportunity to observe the blonde, trying to make sure that she was, in fact, as fine as she says she was, and not harboring any hidden injuries.

When she's safely out of hearing distance - mixing every soda that comes out of the machine - Yaz leans closer to Ryan, trying to veil the concern in her voice the best she could.

"Do you think she has a concussion?"

She didn't really seem all that injured, but still. Falling through a roof couldn't exactly be _good_ for you.

Ryan shakes his head. "Didn't look like it." When Yaz raises a brow at him, he continues, "My nan's a nurse." He shrugs. "I think she's just drunk. A little banged up but otherwise fine. Didn't seem any weirder than usual, I think Theta's just...like that, you know?"

Yaz furrows her brows a bit, processing this. Ryan seemed to have a point - and Yaz remembered his nan, great woman, she trusted her, and by extension, things she had taught Ryan. So she nods slowly, some of the worry melting away from her features, and turns to study the blonde again. _Theta_.

"You know her?" She asks quietly, while she's still out of earshot.

"Yeah. That's Theta." Ryan explains, voice quiet. "I work at a warehouse, she brings stuff over sometimes, electrical parts. She works at a factory on weekends." He looks down to concentrate on unwrapping his sandwich, "She's a physics major. Super smart. Kinda intense. A bit weird. Nice, though."

Ryan shrugs a little, and takes a bite of his sandwich.

Yaz watches quietly as Theta sips her drink with a thoughtful look on her face, and then pushes a button on the soda machine to mix in more Mountain Dew. The place is quiet, though the proximity to campus and the amounts of ongoing parties at the moment probably meant it wouldn't stay that way for long. But for now, it was quiet and peaceful in that very specific way that was only reserved for fast food joints at night.

And this wasn't exactly how Yaz had expected her evening to go, but, well - she had spent ages hoping that _something_ would happen, and this sure as hell counted as something. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some art i did for this and an extra fun tumblr-exclusive drabble between this chapter and the next one!: https://another-doctor-who-blog.tumblr.com/post/624352796173631488/they-didnt-have-extra-blankets-but-they-did-have


	4. As far as I know (I am halfway home)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta wakes up, and doesn't remember much of last night.

Theta wakes up to the smell of strong, fresh coffee and unfamiliar perfume.

It's not unpleasant by any means, but it's _strange_ , and for half a second, she panics a little. She feels absolutely _terrible_ , and not just in that way you do after drinking a little bit too much, no, she felt like she'd been hit by a truck, and on top of that, she couldn't quite remember how she'd ended up on the -undeniably very comfortable- strange sofa she found herself laying on.

She opens her eyes, and then immediately closes them again when the light in the room feels like a laser being shot directly into her brain. "Nope. That's too loud. No thank you." She mumbles, mainly to herself. Internal thinking required more brain power than she currently had available.

She groans quietly, shifts a little, and pushes herself to a pathetic excuse of a sitting position.

"The...light is too loud?" Someone answers, somewhere not-so far away, and honestly, Theta hadn't expected anyone else to be awake at this ungodly hour, whatever it happened to be. Whatever the time was, it was _too early._

Theta (very carefully) cracks one eye open to scope out the source of the voice. There's a girl sitting at the kitchen table with her feet tucked in under her, and she is just as unfamiliar to Theta as the sofa is, and the rest of the apartment too, really, to be exact. The layout looked familiar, so she was pretty sure they were still on campus, but that didn’t narrow it down very much.

The girl - all brightly colored clothes and dark, curly hair - is smiling at her, real and bright and honest, and she seems friendly enough, and on some sub-conscious level Theta feels a little bit better about whatever previous life choices got her here. Even if she didn't exactly remember what they were.

The fact that she couldn't remember much of last night - not after Amy had carried over a tray of ginger shots, anyways - made a heavy ball of worry stick to her insides. She didn't usually drink herself to the point of memory loss - wasn't her style, she didn't _like_ it, not the feeling, not the uncertainty, and definitely not the aftermath. But this wasn't the worst possible scenario she could've found herself in, so she marked that down as a win.

Theta licks her lips. "Yes. Could you do something about that?"

The girl looks at her for a moment, the beginnings of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "It's the sun, mate. Not a lot I can do about it."

Theta closes her eyes again, and sighs deeply. "Can you tell me where I am?" She asks, pressing a hand to the side of her forehead, somehow trying to identify and/or muffle the source of a dull but very annoying banging there.

"Apartment 13C. The Parks building."

This makes some of the worry in Theta's lungs settle. She wasn't far from home, then, and that was good. Silver linings, and all.

"Oh, good! I'm in the right building then!" She says, smiling, and instantly regretting it - her voice felt like it kept echoing through her skull in a very unpleasant manner, and the smile made her face hurt.

"Can you tell me how I ended up here?" She asks, more quietly now and with less movement involved.

The girl raises an eyebrow and sets down her coffee mug (- which, Theta notices, has a rainbow pattern on it, and this makes her feel an bit more comfortable with the whole situation - she might not know how she ended up there, and she might not know this girl, but rainbows were usually a good sign, at least).

"You don't remember?"

Theta racks her brain for a moment, and then shakes her head a little. (And regrets this, too, instantly. Movement was definitely bad, at the moment, and should be avoided at all cost).

"Apparently you fell through the ceiling at the party last night. My roommate Yaz and her friend Ryan brought you here, 'coz you were too plastered to tell them where you lived. I'm Bill, by the way." The girl explains, and some hazy memories start to knit themselves back together in Theta's brain.

She vaguely remembered someone - probably Ryan and Yaz, then - dragging her around with them and asking all kinds of questions she didn't have the answers for, she remembered long dark hair in complex braids and the distant smell of something warm and a bit spicy, and she _thinks_ she can remember the fluorescent buzzing lights of the nearby Subway.

"-Someone named Amelia was real worried about you, though. Called a _bunch_ of times." Bill continues, picking up her mug again and taking a sip of what Theta assumed to be coffee out of it.

"You answered my phone?"

"After like the seventh call, yeah. She did call a _bunch_. And you were out for the count."

Theta sighs. Yeah, Amy would be pissed. _Especially_ if she had introduced herself as Amelia.

"Right. Thank you." She says, hauling herself up from the sofa and almost falling to the floor in the process, and takes a moment to recover from the sudden movement. "Thank your roommate for me, will you? I better get back before _Amelia_ comes and drags me out of here herself." She adds a small smile, carefully.

Last night's events were also starting to solidify in her brain, and she's not sure what she would say or do if she met Yaz again. _Thanks for looking after me?_ That just sounded dumb. What do you say to someone after they drag your idiotic drunk ass back to their flat when they don't even know you? _Hey, thanks for making sure I was okay after I fell through a roof?_

Yeah, she'd rather skip that interaction if she could. Yaz seemed to either still be asleep or in her room, at least, or out somewhere, and in any case it meant that she wasn't _here_ , and that meant that Theta didn't have to face her. 

Bill nods and smiles back at her. "That's probably a good idea. She _did_ seem really worried. Do you have a habit of disappearing on her or something?"

Guilt seeps into Theta's bones, quiet but terrifyingly heavy all the same. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I naming these chapters with vaguely related song lyrics from whatever I was listening to while editing this? Yes, absolutely.


	5. The sidelines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz is lost, and Theta plays Pokemon.

The next time they meet, Yaz is _lost_.

Well, not literally - she knew where she was, technically - but the names of all the places that had been introduced to her during orientation had blended together in her brain, and she couldn't for the life of her remember which building was which and which lecture hall was named after which famous long-dead person.

Yaz had successfully found one of the cafeterias on campus, but wouldn't have been able to say which one it was if she had to.

(They had an excellent salad selection, though).

Next, she was supposed to find the Churchill building.

She didn't remember even hearing of a Churchill building before.

So, she's walking around, wishing that someone would've painted the names of the buildings on the walls with giant, preferably colorful, letters.

"Are you lost?"

The sudden interruption startles Yaz, and she _almost_ manages not to flinch. She didn't know many people on campus yet - in fact, she could count the people she _did_ know with one hand; Bill, and Ryan. _Maybe_ Theta, at a stretch. But not really. Not yet, anyways. They didn't _know each other_ know each other, but Yaz still recognized her voice.

(It was a very recognizable voice, after all).

When Yaz turns around, she sees Theta - who now looks considerably better than the night they'd first met. Now, she's standing up straight, her eyes look remarkably more clear, and she _doesn't_ look like she's about to fall over any second. She's also not wearing a three piece suit - instead, she's in jeans and a t-shirt that has some faded text running across the chest.

( _HOUSTON, I HAVE SO MANY PROBLEMS_ , it says).

Her hair is still a mess, though.

"Um, yeah, a bit. I'm supposed to be in the Churchill building."

Theta nods at her. "Ah. Yeah, you're in the wrong place."

Yaz lets out a frustrated huff - if she didn't find the lecture hall quickly, she'd be late.

"I can show you where it is, if you want." Theta offers, her voice carefully casual. "It's not far. I had _Ethics and A.I_ there last year."

Thankful for the help, Yaz agrees. Theta gives her a smile, and gestures towards one of the almost-identical buildings.

Theta walks in long strides and fluid movements, and she seems to navigate between the buildings and masses of people with ease.

(Something that Yaz contributed to the fact that she had, apparently, been a student here longer than a few whole days).

Yaz follows, falling to step besides her.

Theta avoids Yaz's gaze for a moment, before the silence starts to get awkward. "Yaz, right?" She asks, carefully glancing her way. She recognized her, of course, but honestly, her memories from that night were still a bit blurry, and -

"Yeah. So you remember me then?" There's a hint of amusement in Yaz's voice when she answers.

Theta gives her a shallow one-sided smile. "Sort of."

_You might be just about the only thing I remember from that night._

"Good to know you didn't get full-blown amnesia, then." Yaz says, with half a grin. "How's your head?"

Theta breathes out a quiet chuckle, and shifts her eyes to some middle distance beyond the crowd of other students. "Still attached to my shoulders."

She then takes a breath, and tries to get her words and thoughts in order. She still hadn't thanked Yaz properly, and honestly, she didn't quite know how - social interactions weren't her strong suit - but she still felt like she should say _something_. 

"Thank you, by the way. For-" She makes a vague hand gesture, trying to figure out how that sentence should end. "You know. Everything."

"Don't worry about it." Yaz shrugs a little, and smiles in her direction. "I'm just glad you're alright."

"Well, thank you for being an awesome human and making sure that I _am_ alright."

They share a smile, and Yaz adjusts the strap of her book bag.

"So, you're a physics student?"

Theta tilts her head a little. "Yeah," she squints her eyes a little, confused, "did I tell you that? Don't remember talking about that."

Yaz hums quietly. "No, Ryan did. He recognized you from work."

"Ah." Understanding spreads over Theta's face, smoothing out her features. Then, she takes a deep breath. "What do you think the chances are that no-one at work will hear about the whole falling through a roof thing?"

Yaz chuckles quietly, and shakes her head a bit. "I think Ryan knows how to keep his mouth shut. Everyone else at that party I don't know about, though." She licks her lips. "You're lucky that no-one took video of that."

Theta nods a little. "True. Silver linings, I guess." She walks up the stone steps of one of the buildings, pulls the door open, and makes an exaggerated gesture of holding it open for Yaz, who proceeds to roll her eyes.

"What about you? What are you studying?"

"Criminal justice." Yaz says through a smile. She was half expecting Theta to be surprised, most people were, after all, but she didn't so much as blink.

"Oh, nice. Fighting the good fight?"

"I try to."

Theta smiles at her, before looking over their surroundings. "Which lecture hall?"

Yaz blinks a few times, trying to dig up the information from her brain. "Uh, 115A. I think."

Theta nods, and heads down a hallway. "This way." Then, after a moment, she smiles at Yaz gently. "The first few weeks are always a mess. It's easy to get lost here, most buildings look the same, and you've got a lot of information getting crammed into your head all the time. Don't worry about it though, you'll get the hang of it."

"Hm. Hope so. How long did it take you to learn where everything was?"

Theta breathes out an almost-chuckle. "I'll let you know." She turns a corner and glances over at Yaz. "It's my second year here and I only know the places I frequent. Probably couldn't even find, say, the history building if I tried to." Then, she looks up and tilts her head. "Not even sure if there is a history building. There probably is, though."

Yaz breathes out a chuckle at this.

Passing through rows of almost identical doors and old oil paintings of important looking people, Theta eventually stops in front of a large wooden door, nodding towards it. "Lecture hall 115A." Then, she walks up to the schedule that was pinned up next to the door, studying it.

" _Introduction to argumentation_ ," She reads out loud, "Sound about right?"

Yaz lets out a breath. "Yes. Thank you." She says, and the sincerity of it almost throws off Theta's train of thought.

She grins, before turning on her heel with a small twirl. "Good!" Then, she points towards the door. "You better go before you're late."

Yaz nods, and her features melt into a soft smile. "Right." Disappearing into the lecture hall, she adds another _thank you_ Theta's way, and goes to find a seat.

 _Introduction to argumentation_ is monotonous and boring at best. Mainly, the professor lists what's going to happen in this course, how to get a hold of him if need be, and how _attendance is not mandatory but it is vital for the proper understanding of this course material._

Yaz does her best to listen, she really does, but her mind wanders.

(Mainly to the topic of one physics student that she had now added to her mental list of people she knew on campus, but that’s besides the point).

When she _finally_ gets out of her lecture, she's surprised to find Theta leaning on the wall near the exit. She's holding something that looks suspiciously much like a very old Nintendo DS, and is staring at the screen with a concentrated look on her face, but she looks up at the sound of the lecture hall door opening.

Yaz walks over to her, half curious and half confused, dodging all the other students trying to get out of there as fast as possible and eventually finding her way to Theta’s side.

"Thought I'd make sure you find your way back home, too." She explains with a shrug, leaning off of the wall, before Yaz can even ask.

Yaz just blinks at her, thrown off by the sudden...whatever it was.

"Don't _you_ have lectures?" She asks, trying not to sound rude, but - well, had she really just waited outside the door just so she could walk Yaz home?

That was weird, right?

"Nah. Done for today." She shrugs, and stuffs the game console into the backbag that was loosely hanging off of one of her shoulders.

Yaz studies her for a moment. "You didn't just stand here for two hours waiting for me, right?"

"No!" Theta hurries to answer, and then she tilts her head a bit. "I went to get coffee, and then I sat over there-" she points towards a seating arrangement "-about an hour and forty five minutes reading. And playing Pokemon."

Yaz raises her eyebrows a bit, confused as to _why_ exactly she had done that.

She isn't sure why, and she isn't sure how, but something about the gesture makes her insides feel warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, i know absolutely fuckall nothing about criminal justice, but i'd assume argumentation is something that...maybe is a thing you'd need were you to study something like that. Or i might be completely wrong. If someone knows better, feel free to correct me.


	6. These are my people, these are my friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill and Yaz get invited to a tea party.

One exceedingly boring and completely ordinary Thursday night, Yaz is knee-deep in proofreading one of her essays for the fourth time before turning it in, and Bill is doing whatever it is she does on her laptop, half sitting and half laying on their living room couch, partially upside down.

(If Yaz had to hazard a guess, this also included schoolwork and reading, but how she managed to do it upside down like that, Yaz had no idea).

That's when someone knocks on their door.

They both turn to look at each other, and after a few seconds Bill shrugs, stands up, wipes her hands on her jeans to clean them of some imaginary dust, and walks to the door.

On the other side of it, she finds a girl - a pretty one, and taller than her - with green eyes and bright red hair that's brushed behind her ears.

"Hi! We haven't officially met, I'm Amy. From next door. Theta's roommate?"

Bill's eyebrows raise in recognition. "Ah. You're Amelia."

"Only when I'm mad at her."

Bill smiles at her. "I'm Bill. That's Yaz over there." She points behind her back, to the vague direction of where Yaz was still sitting, surrounded by notes and papers that were scattered around with neatly organized chaos.

"Ah, so you're Yaz." Amy looks her over, and nods a little without further explanation. "Nice to meet you. And thanks for taking care of my idiot roommate. But there's also a real reason I'm here, actually." She gives Bill a small, gentle smile. Then, she nods towards their apartment, left of the doorway. "Clara's stress baking. Friend of ours. And there's no way we'll be able to eat all of the byproducts ourselves. We're drowning in souffles at this point." She explains. "So. I was wondering if you'd like to help?" Amy raises one perfectly shaped eyebrow.

Bill blinks at her, and then she grins. "You don't have to ask me twice." She turns to look at Yaz. "Right?"

Yaz tilts her head and smiles. "Count me in."

Amy grins at them, brushing her hair behind one ear. "Great! Come along, then." She points towards their apartment. "The souffles are best served hot."

"Wait, right now?" Yaz says, looking over the pile of papers in front of her, feeling the anxiety creep up her neck. "I need to -"

Bill takes a deep breath. "You've read that so many times now, Yaz, it's _fine_. Come on! Let's go eat something warm and sweet and good and carb-y and then you can look that over one final time after that." She makes an excited hand gesture. "You know, fresh eyes and all! You’ve got time to submit it until midnight, right?"

Amy nods. "See? Sounds like a solid plan to me."

Yaz mulls over the thought for a moment. She _had_ planned on staying in and studying all night, but that did sound quite tempting the more she thought about it. And Bill was right. She had re-read her essay so many times now the words had started to not quite look like words anymore, and she was probably due a break soon anyways. Her eyes were starting to feel weird.

And, an added bonus she didn't quite let herself think about but that tipped the scale over to agreeing anyways, was that Theta would probably be there.

(Not that that meant anything).

They had only seen each other in passing, lately, and, well. Yaz wouldn’t complain if they saw each other more, that’s all. 

She sets down her laptop and puts aside the papers on her lap, stretches her legs for a bit, and stands up.

Her legs are tingling - probably shouldn't have sat in the same position for so long - and she shifts her weight around from one side to the other.

"Okay."

She _almost_ panics a little about the way she looked - she hadn't exactly dressed for seeing anyone besides Bill tonight, she was wearing a ratty old hoodie and yoga pants (and fuzzy socks, because it turns out that old buildings like this have really cold floors), and her hair had been in the same braids since yesterday morning, and by now they were messy at best.

Then she tells herself that Theta wasn't the type of person who'd care about that, probably, (and then she tries really hard to convince herself that _she_ didn't care about whether Theta cared or not), and Bill was wearing a faded T-shirt and mismatching socks, too, so really, they about matched.

Besides, it was late. And she was tired. And really, who cares?

So, they follow Amy out of the room and into the apartment next door.

The sight they're greeted with is nothing short of chaotic.

A short, brown haired girl that Yaz assumed to be Clara is in the kitchen, wearing a bright red apron that was full of flour stains, holding a large bowl and whipping something in it with a very concentrated (and intense) look in her eyes. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, and around her, on every visible surface, there were pots and pans and baking trays.

There's classical music blaring through the apartment, with the volume high enough to make Yaz flinch when the violins come in.

Theta is sitting cross-legged on the couch, the blue-white light from her laptop lighting her face in unnaturally sharp contours and making her eyes look paler than they actually were.

(Not that Yaz had paid attention).

There are trays of -something- on either sides of her laptop, and a cup of tea was standing in the middle of some colorful notes and papers that seemed to be full of absolute nonsense. She has large headphones on, and she's tapping out some rhythm on her knee, completely unbothered by the classical music that was blaring through the kitchen.

And then she notices them.

Theta lifts her gaze from the screen of her laptop, peels off the headphones, and lets them hang around her neck.

"Hi!" She says, eyebrows raised in surprise and lips curling in an automatic smile. "What are you doing here?"

"I invited them over. We are having a tea party." Amy answers, before Yaz can get a word out. Not that she knew what she was going to say, anyways.

"We are?" Theta asks, furrowing her brows, and scrunching up her face a little.

"Yes, we are. You didn't get an invite because you already live here."

Theta thinks this over, then tilts her head, and shrugs. "Okay. Cool." Then, she turns towards Bill and Yaz. "Can I interest you in a cinnamon roll? They're kind of taking over my study area. I don't think I can deal with this invasion on my own."

Yaz smiles at her, and as Theta answers her smile, something light and warm swells in Yaz’s chest.

"Take some from the fresh batch! They're best served warm." Clara yells from the kitchen.

Grinning, Bill walks to the kitchen counter, looking over the quite impressive selection of baked goods.

After a moment, Yaz is cradling a cup of steaming tea in her hands, sitting on the couch next to Theta. Somehow, the organized chaos and lively mess in the room reminded her of home, and as Bill's bubbly laughter carried over from the kitchen and she could hear Amy and Clara bicker lightly over some recipe or another, Yaz found herself wondering if this was what having _friends_ was really like.

She hadn't really had a group of friends like this, before, and sure, she didn't really know these people - not yet, at least - but somehow, she still felt like she could _belong_ here. And it made her feel warm, somehow.

Yaz could faintly hear the melody still spilling out of Theta's headphones - Clara had turned down her classical music slightly to, you know, be able to hear people speak, which was probably just common courtesy when you had people over.

"You listen to rap music when you study?" Yaz asks, both confused and slightly amused.

Theta just shrugs. "Yeah?"

"How on _Earth_ can you concentrate on anything?"

"Because," Theta explains, "if I don't have background music, my brain will make it's _own_ background music, and trust me when I say that that's _way_ more distracting than this." She gestures towards the headphones. "I'd much rather listen to a steady flow of words with a concrete beat than my brain blasting some annoying line on a loop." She explains, not meeting her eyes.

 _You amaze me_ , Yaz wants to say.

"Oh." She says instead. "Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did say that the gang's all here, guys.


	7. I'm mostly scared, I am mostly unprepared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tea party continues.

"The souffle's really good." Bill says, poking at her share of one with a small fork. 

Clara smiles, leaning on the counter and taking off her oven mitts. "Thanks! It was my mum's recipe."

"Oh was it? We hadn't heard." Amy says sarcastically, the beginnings of a smile tugging at her cheeks.

Clara throws an oven mitt at her.

Amy dodges behind a counter.

Bill smiles a little at the interaction. "Well, in any case, it's good." 

"I agree!" Theta joins the conversation from her spot on the sofa. "Very fluffy."

Clara smiles at her, proud of her souffle.

"It's nice you have a family recipe like that." Yaz says, smiling politely. "My dad cooks a lot, but it doesn't always end well."

"Neither do the souffles." Amy says quietly, and Clara squints her eyes at her.

"It's a very delicate process! Besides, my souffles are a lot better than your weird fish pies." Clara counters, crossing her arms.

"I love fish pies!" Bill joins in.

Clara turns to look at her, eyebrows raised. "She puts custard on hers." She says it like it's a challenge, daring Bill to still agree and stand by her earlier statement.

"Surprisingly, not as bad as it sounds." Theta says quietly, leaning closer to Yaz but not taking her eyes off the girls in the kitchen - they've seemed to settle on some sort of a truce, for now.

Yaz takes a moment to process this, staring at Theta. "That sounds _disgusting_."

Theta shrugs, not at all bothered by that.

"Do you have any traditional and/or weird family recipes?" Yaz asks, and really, she thinks it's just small talk to get to know her better, but evidently it's not, because Theta falls very quiet and worryingly still.

Yaz hadn't even notices that she'd been moving, before, but she must have, because now she seemed to be very still in comparison. Maybe it was the absence of a bouncing leg or the tapping of fingers or something small like that that Yaz hadn't paid attention to before, but now that it was gone, she missed it.

It made her feel like she'd said something wrong, and that made anxiety swell in her lungs.

"No." Theta says, not meeting her eyes, and she smiles a little, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes - it’s a sad smile, if anything.

And Yaz doesn't know what to say.

The silence between them stretches too far from casual and shifts over to awkward and slightly uncomfortable, and Yaz doesn't know how to bring back the conversation without making things worse - so she just sits there, trying to think of something to say. 

The silence feels heavy around her. The mood in the room had changed very quickly, and she didn't like how _delicate_ it felt - like the whole moment might shatter if she said the wrong thing now.

Or, well. Apparently, she had already said the wrong thing - she wasn't sure why exactly, but it had seemed to strike a nerve with Theta, and Yaz just didn't want to make it worse.

After a very long, very quiet moment, Bill breaks the silence from her spot in the kitchen, where she's sitting with her hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea. "Hey, Theta. You're a physics student. What’s your take on time travel?"

Theta lifts her head up in interest, now looking at Bill. "Forwards, easy. Trying to go backwards is where it gets tricky." She says, now more lively again.

Yaz shoots a thankful look Bill's way.

Bill smiles at Theta, curious, leaning closer. "Why's that?"

"Well, manipulating time itself is easy. Causality is where you'll run into trouble." She explains, waving her hand around in a vaguely circular motion. "Things happen because other things happen, and you can't reverse that. The universe doesn't allow it."

"Manipulating time is easy, she says." Amy yells over from the kitchen. "Do you know something the rest of us don't, Theta? Because if you do, I'd like an extra two hours between 7 am and 8 am, thanks." She says, poking a fork into her souffle.

Theta glares at her, but it's more playful than anything.

"Manipulating the speed at which time moves is pretty simple, _in theory_." She explains. "Doesn't mean I can handcraft you additional hours to cram into your mornings." She tilts her head a little, "Well, not very easily, anyways."

Yaz looks at her, and for the second time that night, she wonders how someone like this just stumbled into her life, with no warning whatsoever.

Sure, there was a lot she didn't know about Theta, yet, but she wanted to learn.

"Hm. Shame." Amy shrugs. "Let me know if you figure that one out."


	8. As I wander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz tries to lure Theta out of her shell with a broken game console

Ryan sets down his tray across from Yaz's. In the busy cafeteria, the dull plastic clank of it gets lost in the noise of the room, instantly becoming just another addition to the background buzzing of tired students just trying to get through their lunch breaks.

"Are you free on Sunday night?" He asks as a form of greeting, and Yaz raises her eyebrows at him.

"Yeah, why?" She asks after a silent beat, a little suspicious; the way Ryan had said that sounded more like he was asking for help and less like he just wanted to hang out.

Ryan sits down and takes a deep breath. "I told my nan that you're studying here too and she invited you over for Sunday night dinner."

Yaz just blinks at him, surprised.

"-And I _may_ have already told her you're coming."

" _Ryan_!"

"You said you were free!"

"But I could've not been!"

Ryan lifts his hands up in a surrendering motion. "Sorry, alright." He says, "But you try saying no to her and see how that goes."

Yaz glares at him a little, but doesn't argue. A few moments pass in silence.

"So you're coming then?"

She takes a deep breath, thinking it over. A free home-cooked meal? Yeah, that didn't sound so bad. And she had always liked Ryan's nan, even if she hadn't seen the woman in years.

"Yeah, okay. I'll go." She says, and Ryan looks visibly relieved. Then, just to be sure, she adds, "You know I don't eat meat, right?"

"Yeah, sure." Ryan nods, "Don't worry about that. She likes vegetarian food anyways, says it's better for your health or something."

Yaz smiles at him, and wraps her hands around the cardboard takeaway coffee cup - currently full of green tea that was a bit too bitter and tasted more like the cardboard cup than like actual tea.

"She's made us eat veggie meals at least once a week. Might as well be Sunday." Ryan continues with a shrug.

Yaz doesn't ask who the _us_ includes exactly, and pretty soon Ryan explains on his own;

"She's got a new husband, Graham. They live just outside the city. Made me promise to visit for Sunday night dinners every week."

"That's nice." Yaz smiles at him. She's pretty sure her family would've done that too, if they lived closer. 

And _maybe_ this made her miss her family, just a little bit.

Sunday dinner with Ryan’s family didn’t sound that bad.

Later that day, after four hours of exceedingly boring lectures, Yaz walks up to the door of apartment 13D, nervous.

In between of trying to stay on top of all her classes, and just trying to be a functional human being in general, life was busy, and she hadn't had nearly as much time for socializing as she'd hoped, lately. She hadn't seen Theta in days - they hadn't even run into each other in the hallway, and Yaz wanted to change that. 

She still felt a bit bad about bringing up Theta’s family - something she now knew was a touchy subject, apparently - and making things awkward even if she hadn’t meant to. 

Thankfully, just the person she'd come looking for opens the door.

"Hey! Uh, you know stuff about technology and...fixing things, right?" Yaz asks, the nervousness making her voice sound just a little bit hollow in her ears.

Theta raises an eyebrow a little. "That's a pretty broad spectrum, but yes, I suppose so. Why?"

Yaz takes a breath, anxiety rising up in her throat.

She didn't like asking for things, and they didn't really know each other that well, and maybe this was dumb -

But she was already here, so there was no backing down now.

(Besides, backing down from things wasn’t her style, anyways). 

"Uh. I found this old game console online. But it doesn't seem to work, and I thought - I don't know-" She licks her lips, trying to get the words straight in her head. Theta leans to the door frame, watching her with patient, curious eyes.

She knows that Theta likes tinkering with different kinds of technology, so really, this sounds like it would be right up her alley. "-I thought maybe, If you could take a look and see if you can figure out what the problem is? If it's not too much trouble."

Theta smiles at her softly, and it makes some of the nervousness in Yaz's veins dissipate.

"Sure! I can take a look." She leans off of the doorway with a small twirl. "Love a good project."

Yaz smiles at her, thankful for the help. The console hadn't been expensive, but still. She and Bill had both been pretty excited about it (and Ryan, too, once he heard of it). "Do you want me to bring it over, or-?"

Theta tilts her head, thinking. "Nah, I can just come over there. You've got it hooked up to something?"

Yaz nods. "Yeah, the TV."

Smiling, Theta nods at her. "Let me just grab my screwdrivers."

Theta inspects the old console for a moment.

"Right, and what's the problem, exactly?" She asks, looking over the wires that connected the console to the TV.

"There's no picture." Yaz starts, suddenly feeling like maybe this was a stupid idea, and maybe she just hadn't set it up correctly. "The game starts, and there's sound, but there's just...no picture for some reason."

Theta nods, her brows a little furrowed. Then, she leans over the TV to poke at some of the wires behind it. "Sounds like a problem with the AV cable."

She turns on both the console and the TV, and just like Yaz said, the game starts - she can hear the choppy theme music - but the screen’s black.

Humming quietly to herself, she turns off the power, pulls out one of the cables, and lifts it up to her face and squints her eyes at it. Then she unplugs the rest of the cables too, sits down cross-legged on the floor, picks up the console, and starts to take out the screws in the casing.

"You bought this used?" She asks, voice casual, and Yaz nods.

"Yeah. Some guy was selling a ton of old gaming stuff."

"So this _has_ worked at some point, then, that’s good." Theta nods to herself. "Unless that guy was really into playing games without the visual aspect for some reason. Maximum difficulty, I suppose. Or maybe he was blind, that could explain it too."

Yaz just blinks at her rambling.

"-Or maybe there's just a problem with the AV connection." Theta continues, lifting off the top half of the console's casing, and inspecting the mess of colorful wires underneath.

Yaz watches quietly as she goes over the wires -moving them around with surprisingly gentle motions and with a concentrated look on her face, a small crease between her eyebrows. 

"How do you know all this stuff?" Yaz asks after a while, partially out of curiosity and partially just to fill the silence.

Theta tilts her head a little and hums quietly. "I've been working in electrical assembly for a while now. It's pretty basic stuff, but I guess you just pick up some things after a while." She shrugs with one shoulder, and shifts her eyes back to the console in her lap.

"What do you do there, exactly?" Yaz asks, curious.

Theta licks her lips. "Mainly, circuit boards for different types of machinery." She waves the small screwdriver around in a vaguely circular motion, before going back to unscrewing the incredibly tiny screws in the console.

She pulls out some colorful wires, and quite frankly, Yaz didn't understand what she was doing. But the company was nice, and she'd take any excuse to hang out with her, really, and somewhere between the taking apart and fixing and rewiring there was some casual conversation, and Yaz makes tea for them, and it's _nice_.

"Ah." Theta smiles, looking up from the console that no longer resembled a console at all. "Found the problem." She points her screwdriver at something that Yaz couldn't quite see, "This bit here's disconnected."

Yaz answers her smile, and Theta spins the small screwdriver around in her fingers with the fluid, effortless movements of someone who had done this hundreds of times before. And maybe Yaz shouldn't have been impressed by this, and _maybe_ she shouldn't have been turned on by it either, but, well.

She was only human. 


	9. In some sad way I already know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting in the middle of the night.

Sometimes, when Theta can't sleep, she goes up to the roof.

She's been doing it a long time, practically ever since she moved to the dorm - and so far, no-one else had seemed that interested in the roof access.

People didn't often go looking for places they didn't know were there.

So naturally Theta damn near jumps out of her skin when she hears the door to the roof creak. At first, it's because she thinks the door might have shut and she might have accidentally locked herself out in the middle of the night - and then, it's because she hears _footsteps_ , which means that somebody else is there.

She isn't sure how to feel about that.

Theta is half between turning to look who it is and hiding when she sees her. Clad in only pajamas and her hair in a braid that's messier than usual, Yaz is standing there like a deer caught in headlights.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think anyone else would be up here-" She starts, and suddenly Theta feels like maybe she _shouldn't_ be there. Yaz's voice is laced with a hint of panic, and Theta doesn't _want_ her to panic.

"It's okay-" She starts, and at the same time Yaz continues with "I can go-" and then they both have to take a moment to figure out who should speak first.

In the dark hazy night air the silence feels soft, even when it's composed of the stretched-out seconds of trying to come up with the right thing to say.

"It's okay." Theta repeats, her heartbeat starting to slow down again. "I don't mind. You don't have to leave."

Yaz takes a breath, and her shoulders seem to relax a little with the exhale. "Are you sure?"

"Positive." Theta tries to smile, but her face doesn't quite comply.

Neither of them ask what the other one is doing there. It seemed like one of those delicate unspoken truths that seemed like it would shatter if said out loud - and besides, it seemed pretty self-explanatory.

No-one comes up to the roof in the middle of the night if they're okay. They both know that much.

"Okay then." Yaz nods, and walks up to the concrete ledge Theta is sitting on. She sits down next to her, and turns her face towards the sky.

Theta has her knees lifted up to her chest, she’s wrapped her arms around them and now rests her chin on her knees. Yaz dangles her feet off of the edge - it's not the real edge of the roof, there's still some level under them, but it's close enough to feel freeing and a little bit dangerous.

They sit like that, for a moment.

Not being a fan of awkward silences, Theta decides to break it. "It calms me," She explains, before Yaz can bring herself to ask. "the sky."

Yaz turns to look at her briefly, but Theta has her eyes set on the stars.

She turns to look at the sky, too, and lets her eyes shift over the stars for a moment. They don’t show very clearly, with the light pollution of the city and all, but she can still see enough stars to make out some distantly familiar constellations - she didn’t remember their names, but she remembered seeing them before, somewhere. "It's beautiful."

"It is." Yaz thinks she can hear the smile in Theta's voice, and in the quiet darkness, it feels strangely intimate. More personal than anything shared in the daylight.

"I like the vastness of it all." Theta says quietly.

"The vast, dark, empty void we're surrounded by...calms you?" 

Theta smiles a little. "It's not dark or empty." She corrects Yaz quietly. "We can't see it from here, but space isn't empty, Yaz. It's full of life, full of wonders, full of things we couldn't even behind to imagine."

Yaz turns to look at her, and something tight in her chest dissipates. She doesn't dare to interrupt Theta, so instead, she just listens quietly and tries not to let it show that she'd much rather look at Theta than any of the stars in the sky.

"-And there's just _so much_ , Yaz. So much we don't know, so many different worlds out there, whole nebulae bigger than our entire star system, entire planets with their own atmospheres and ecosystems and _worlds_. And what we can see is only four percent of it all. _Four percent_ , Yaz. Dark matter makes up the majority of _everything_ we know and we can't even see it, nevertheless understand it!” Theta breathes out a quiet, tired chuckle. “Isn’t that amazing? It's a whole _universe_ out there. Multiple, possibly. Endless possibilities." Her voice is full of pure wonder, and then Theta _shrugs_ , as if she'd just said something completely ordinary and irrelevant.

"I guess it just puts things into perspective, that's all. Makes all my problems seem a lot smaller. The universe doesn't care whether I sleep tonight or not, whether I pass that one class or not. It'll still be out there, and it'll still continue to be amazing, no matter what I do."

Yaz takes a moment to wrap her brain around the logic. It does make sense - in a strange, very specific to Theta -kind of way, but it _does_ make sense.

"Huh." She says. "Well, you're certainly in the right field. To me that just sounds like I might have an existential crisis if I think about it too hard."

Theta turns to look at her. "You're worried you might not be?" She asks after a moment, voice quiet. Careful. "In the right field, I mean."

Yaz takes a moment to think it over. "I don't know." She finally settles on a non-answer, and it feels like the truth. She takes a deep breath. "I just feel like I should be doing....more, somehow."

Theta nods. "I get that." She says quietly, trying to make it sound as comforting as possible. "But you're young, Yaz. You're just a student. You'll have plenty of time to do more once you graduate."

"I know." Yaz says, picking at her nail beds. It's one of the bad habits she's trying to outgrow, but hasn't quite been able to shake yet. "There's just so much...wrong in the world."

Theta hums quietly. "And you want to fix it?"

"You _don't_?"

"You can't fix the whole world by yourself."

"I can't sit by and let it continue to be shit, either."

Theta smiles. She _smiles_ , and for a second, Yaz forgets what she was thinking about.

"You know what that says about you, Yaz?"

"What?"

"That you, Yasmin Khan, are one of the good ones." Theta answers, as if it was obvious. She turns to look at her, and Yaz can see the stars reflect on her eyes - specks of gold, swimming in hazel.

A comfortable silence falls over them - Yaz doesn't quite know how to answer to the compliment, and Theta doesn't quite know where to go from there either. She shifts a little, and dangles her feet off the edge of the roof, too, mirroring Yaz’s position.

Then she turns to face the horizon that's slowly but steadily starting to shift from deep blue to bright orange.

"The sun's coming up." Theta says, and leans back on her arms. "You want to go get coffee? The place down the street opens at five."

Yaz stares at her with wide eyes, trying to figure out if she was serious or not.

Yaz hadn't planned on staying out there the whole night, and she _certainly_ didn't plan on going out in public looking like this.

"I'm in my pajamas." She says, hoping it would work as an answer.

"So? I can guarantee you it's not the worst or the weirdest thing on this campus. Besides, you look good." Theta answers, and then upon realizing she said the last part out loud, too, she promptly turns her eyes away.

Okay, so _maybe_ seeing Yaz like that -freshly woken up, hair messy- had awoken some feelings in her, but she hadn't been planning on _doing anything about it._ So, being the person she is, Theta tries to save the situation by rambling.

"There's a group of guys that go out dressed in nothing but white bed sheets as badly wrapped togas at least once a month. There’s also several theme parties going on every week, so there’s _always_ someone who’s dressed weird. I can also promise you're not the only one out and about in your pajamas." Theta makes a vague hand gesture towards herself. "There's me, for instance." She adds, with a smile that dares to be half hopeful.

For the first time since coming up to the roof, Yaz actually focuses on what Theta is wearing. It's a shirt with a rainbow running through her chest, and loose, dark pants, and her long grey coat is loosely draped around her shoulders, and somehow she looks _softer_ than normally. Or maybe everyone just looked like that in the middle of the night, when they were wearing pajamas.

"I don't know." Yaz says, and as tempting as morning coffee with Theta sounds, the _going out in public_ part still seemed quite dreadful.

But Yaz also knew there was no way she would be going back to sleep that night, and-

"You can wear my coat." Theta offers, and the thought makes something in Yaz's rib cage melt.

Yaz takes a breath and licks her lips. "Okay."

Theta smiles, and Yaz swears it's brighter than the sunrise. 


	10. Before tomorrow catches up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A breakfast date!  
> (Is it a date? Not sure.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May i offer you some fluff in this trying time?

The coffee shop is quiet and empty. This is not surprising in itself, because not many people were awake this early unless they absolutely had to be.

The smell of coffee, cinnamon, freshly baked bread and other baked goods floated through the air, there were fairy lights hung from the ceiling, and acoustic music was quietly playing in the background. It's a small, cozy place, and the warm atmosphere was a nice change from the sharp morning air.

There's only one barista - a girl with large round glasses and bright blue hair that’s tied up in two space buns - and she's busy placing muffins and croissants and doughnuts and cakes on display as they walk up to the counter.

"Morning!" She greets them with a warm smile, not seemingly at all dazed by the fact that they were there this early, both in their pajamas, and looked like they'd just rolled directly out of bed.

(Though Yaz _was_ wearing Theta's jacket now, and this probably made it look a little bit more like she was actually wearing real clothes. Theta, however, was unmistakably in her pajamas. This didn't seem to bother her at all, though; she seemed confident as ever, and at this point Yaz was starting to think that maybe that was just an inherent quality of hers that had nothing to do with what she was wearing.)

"What can I get you?" The barista asks, wiping her hands off to a dark green apron.

"A large black coffee, a croissant, and a slice of that triple chocolate cake." Theta answers, in a way that made it sound like this was her regular order here. "Yaz?"

Somewhere between reading the daily specials scribbled on a small chalk board on the counter and ' _triple chocolate cake_ ', Yaz realizes that she _doesn't have any money on her_. Or a credit card. _Because she's in her pajamas_.

"Uh-" She starts, now both nervous and a bit embarrassed.

Evidently, Theta somehow knows exactly what she's thinking, because she smiles, leans closer, and gently drapes an arm around her shoulders. "Don't worry about it, I've got this." She says, voice quiet, her breath tickling the side of Yaz's neck.

Yaz swallows.

She definitely does not shiver at all, and her heart _definitely_ does not pick up pace.

She focuses on the blackboard behind the barista, looking over their selection. "I'll have...your house blend of black tea, please, and a banana muffin." Yaz smiles politely, and the barista smiles back. Everything is normal and she isn't at all totally submerged in the way Theta's breath on her skin feels.

"Coming right up!"

After a moment, Yaz is stirring honey into her tea, and watching Theta add entirely too much sugar into her coffee across the table. She's lost count by now, but it's at _least_ five of those little packages that were, probably, meant to be one per serving.

The atmosphere is warm, and calm, and comfortable, and for a moment they just sit in silence, listening to whatever acoustic cover of a few years old pop song was playing through the stereos now.

"Thank you." Yaz says quietly, wrapping her hands around the tea mug and relishing in the warmth of it.

"For what?" Theta asks, not looking up from her coffee, and sounding genuinely a little confused.

"For-" Yaz makes a small hand gesture towards the table. "This. Paying. I didn't think I'd be going anywhere when I got up to that roof, so, uh-" she shrugs, "empty pockets."

Theta hums quietly, and smiles a little. "Don't worry about it." She shifts to fold one leg under herself in her seat. "With how much money I've spent here, this hardly makes a dent."

Yaz raises an eyebrow a little. "You come here often?"

She means it in the most literal sense of the question, really. But Theta blinks at her, before chuckling quietly, and Yaz realizes what she’d sounded like. 

(It's a honest, breathy almost-laugh, and Yaz maybe likes it a little bit more than she should).

"Is that the best pick-up line you've got? I'm disappointed, Yaz." Theta says, very badly trying to hide her smile.

(Yaz can hear it in her voice, and see it tugging at her lips).

Slumping a little in her seat, Yaz breathes out a frustrated huff of air. "I didn't mean it like that."

Theta smiles and leans back. "I know." she says, smiling like she’d just won a prize. “Do you want a bite of the chocolate cake? It’s very good.” 

Yaz blinks at her, a little surprised about how quickly she’d turned around the conversation, but thankful for it nevertheless. 

Just because she _maybe_ had some feelings for Theta that weren’t just neighborly friendliness, that didn’t mean she was ready to do anything about it. 

“Sure.” She smiles, and Theta picks up one of the small forks on the table, spins it around between her fingers once, and offers it to Yaz.

Amy walks into the kitchen, in her night gown, eyes bleary and hair messy, just as Theta opens the front door. Amy squints her eyes at her.

"Where have you been?" She asks, confused and a little groggy, her accent prominent as ever.

"Morning coffee with Yaz."

There's a moment where they just stare at each other, and really, Theta didn't have to be a time traveler to know exactly where this conversation was going, because Amy was Amy and they've lived together for a little over a year now.

" _Ooh_." Amy smiles, and Theta can practically see the wheels turning in her head. "Tell me everything. Especially the dirty bits."

Theta sighs, leaning down to take off her boots. "Not like that. We _just_ got coffee."

Amy pouts a little. "Well that's no fun." She walks over to the kitchen and starts digging through cabinets to make her own morning coffee. "Next time you should also do the part that usually leads up to breakfast with someone, too."

Theta rolls her eyes.

Quietly, in some distant part of her brain that she mostly pretends isn't there, she agrees.


	11. Let the games begin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the weekend, Bill and Yaz get invited to game night, and Theta cheats at Trivial Pursuit.

The weekend brings a much-needed break to the lectures, homework, reading, trying to get all your work done _and_ somehow still holding onto your sanity in the process. Weekends were reserved for relaxing and sleeping in (at least in theory - Yaz didn't actually sleep that late, usually, but the point was that she had the _option_ to do so if she wanted to). She still had work to do, of course, but she didn't physically have to go to classes, and even if she did have to spend a few hours reading about the boring details of the justice system or writing an essay or two, at least she could do so in her pajamas. 

(Speaking of which, Theta hadn't asked for her jacket back. Yaz wasn't sure if this was because she was too polite to do so of because she just plain forgot - could be either, honestly - and she decided to roll with it, either way. She'd give it back later, of course. But at the time, all warm and happy and comfortable, walking back into their building before the rest of the world was even awake, she had been completely okay with holding onto it for a little bit longer. No complaints on her end).

(And maybe she had spent a little longer than necessary just sitting there when she got back, wrapped in the slightly too-big jacket, smiling like an idiot).

As strange and unexpected as it had been, their impromptu breakfast date had felt somehow very, very comfortable. Like a spot of sunlight when you maybe hadn't quite been cold before but weren't warm, either, so it's just a pleasant surprise, you know?

( _Not a date_ , Yaz mentally corrects herself. _It wasn't a date_ ).

She wasn't sure what it had been, exactly, but _date_ didn't quite feel like the right word. Dates were dressing up and going to movies or dinner or something and wearing shoes that were just a little bit painful and putting too much though into which perfume to wear and what to do with your hair and being nervous and awkward and not knowing what to talk about. 

_Dates_ aren't talking about the universe on the roof in the middle of a night in your pajamas. And they're not shared breakfast in empty cafes and sleepy smiles and sitting silently in the first rays of sunlight, just drinking in the slowly waking world and the comfort and the silence and the happiness. 

Even though maybe Yaz would've liked the idea of dating more if that was, in fact, what dates were like.

But, really, _dates_ and _comfortable_ didn't really go together in her brain, so this particular train of thought crashed pretty quickly. 

(Theta's jacket smelled like vanilla). 

  
Later that day, someone knocks on their door. 

Bill, who was in the middle of making herself a cup of tea, goes to open the door. She has an empty cup in one hand and a small spoon in the other, and she sticks the spoon in her mouth to free up one hand for opening the door. 

On the other side of it, she finds Amy again. "Hi! Hey, listen, we're having a game night, and we need a few more players to even out the teams for Trivial Pursuit. Interested?"

Bill smiles at her, and Yaz slips to the doorway, too, peering over Bill's shoulder. "How would two more people even out the teams?" She asks, curious, and a little confused. 

Amy tilts her head and licks her lips. "Hm. Due to some past complications, Clara and Theta aren't allowed to be in the same team anymore, and if you two come along, we could sort that out _and_ have a referee."

"Past complications?" Bill asks, with a not-so thinly veiled layer of amusement in her voice.

"You need a referee for Trivial Pursuit?" Yaz asks, leaning closer.

"Yes." Amy answers nonchalantly, like it was just one of those irrefutable facts of existence. "Clara has like 70% of the questions memorized, and Theta cheats."

Yaz raises her eyebrows. She wasn't surprised, exactly, but it still seemed like the appropriate reaction. "How do you cheat in Trivial Pursuit?"

"Oh, you'd be surprised."

Bill shrugs, and then turns to look at Yaz, smiling. "I don't have anything better to do. Sounds like fun."

Yaz smiles at Amy, leaning back and giving her a small shrug. "Yeah, sounds like it could be fun. Count us in."

  
Turns out, their version of Trivial Pursuit is a really, _really_ weird one.

It seems to be a combination of several different games, and about five minutes after entering the apartment, Yaz starts to understand the need for a referee. 

(The choice made sense, too - Amy's boyfriend seemed like the most sensible one out of all of them, and was currently the only one who wasn't arguing about the rules, and the game hadn't even started yet). 

The other participants included: Theta, who was unboxing the game and setting up the game board on the kitchen table, Clara, who was going through a very messy-looking notebook and reciting something from it that Theta clearly didn't agree with, Amy, who was trying to bribe the referee by flirting, and their friend Jack, who was mixing drinks in the kitchen and occasionally shouting comments into the vague argument about the rules.

It was a lot. But mainly in a good way.

"Look-" Amy's boyfriend, Rory, tried to talk over the general mayhem of the room, "-could we just go over the basic rules? Bill and Yaz are going to be _really_ confused if we don't-"

"Oh don't worry, I'm already confused." Bill says, smiling. "Are you not allowed to actually say the answers, or did I hear that wrong?" She asks, looking over to the kitchen, where Theta was now holding the rule book above her head, out of Clara's reach. 

Rory sighs. "Yes. I mean no. I mean-" 

Amy smiles like she's watching a very entertaining tv show.

"You're not!" Theta interjects over from across the room. "You need to describe your answers without using the word itself."

Bill and Yaz both look over to Rory, who nods, confirming this. "Right. So someone in your team has the question, they read that, and then they have to _describe_ the options without saying the words used in the answer card. For example, if the options are colors, You'd have to describe them without using the words themselves. With me so far?"

"Yeah, I think so?"

Rory nods again. "Right. Then, the other people in your team can guess what the answers are, and pick the one they think is correct."

Bill nods slowly. "Okay. And what are they arguing about?" She asks, pointing towards the kitchen.

"Whether or not you're allowed to use different languages." Rory peers over to the kitchen, too. "I think. Unless they've moved on to hand gestures already."

"...Does anyone here _know_ multiple languages?" 

"Not really."

"Right." 

"Martha knows German!" Clara says, in a tone that made it sound like a winning argument.

"Martha isn't _here_." Jack answers, walking past her and towards the mismatching arrangement of a sofa and chairs. He's carrying a tray of weirdly colored drinks, and places it down a side table with a surprising amount of grace in his movements. 

"She could be!" Clara argues.

"Who's Martha?" Yaz asks, turning to look at Amy and Rory again. 

"Another friend of ours. She's a med student, who apparently had better things to do tonight than take part in this circus." Amy answers this time, and leans into her boyfriend's side on a chair that was definitely meant for just one person. 

Yaz nods, accepting this, and then turns to find Jack offering drinks to both her and Bill, respectively.

"Hello." He says, smiling.

"Stop it." Theta calls out from across the room, and her tone of voice makes it sound like this is something she has said to him several times before in the past, and probably without much effect.

"I'm just saying hello!" Jack argues, almost rolling his eyes (almost - it's evident in his face that he wants to, but doesn't quite get there). "They're your friends, I'm just being polite."

Theta glares at him.

It takes another twenty minutes for the game to start, and from there, the place spirals into absolute chaos relatively quickly. Clara and Theta are trying to out-speak each other, possibly in the hopes of breaking a new world record of some sort, Amy and Jack have seemed to form some sort of an alliance despite being in opposite teams, and Rory seems to be slowly losing his mind. Theta disagrees with every other answer and tried calling Hasbro to argue (their customer service wasn't open, which was probably good) and Bill and Yaz are just doing their best to keep up with the insanity - Yaz on Theta's team and Bill with Clara and Jack, and Yaz is pretty sure _none_ of them know who's even actually winning by now, but everyone seems to be having a good time either way, so she's not sure if it matters.

She hopes they get invited to game night more often.

Sunday night rolls around, accompanied by gloomy weather and light rain, and Yaz finds herself at Ryan's grandparent's house, surrounded by colorful decor, friendly chatter, and the comforting smell of a home cooked meal.

"Have you made friends for yourself, love?" Grace asks, warm as ever. She doesn't treat Yaz like a stranger, even though the last she'd seen her had been when she was just a little kid running around their house pretending to be a spy. 

(It had been a different house, sure, and Yaz wasn't sure if Grace even remembered it, but in any case, the point stands that it had been a long time ago). 

But their home is very welcoming, and her new husband - Graham - is nice to her, too. 

"Well, besides Ryan, a few. My roommate's really nice." Yaz explains, smiling politely, and poking a few green beans into her fork. As promised, Grace had prepared a vegetarian meal, and Yaz appreciated the gesture. Not only was it extremely nice of them, the food was also actually very good.

"Oh, that's nice. Better than being stuck living with someone you don't like." Grace nudges her shoulder a little, gently, in a friendly gesture. "I once had a roommate that walked in her sleep. That was freaky."

Yaz raises her eyebrows slightly, surprised. "Oh, wow. Yeah, Bill doesn't do that. That I know of, at least." 

Grace laughs this off, before saying something about how that was good for her heart for sure.

"What are you studying again?" Graham asks, and it sounds like he probably already knows and is just making conversation. She doesn't mind - it's good small talk, and there are few things that are more uncomfortable than awkward silences with people you only sort of know. 

"Criminal justice." Yaz says, with half a shrug and a small smile.

Graham nods, and it looks like he almost wants to ask a follow-up question of 'what does that entail, exactly?', but doesn't. Yaz smiles politely, and takes a bite of her garlic bread. 

(It's good - self made and warm - and she makes a mental note to ask Grace for the recipe later. Yaz didn't bake a lot, exactly, but she could always start, and this seemed like the kind of bread that would be worth the effort).

"Right, right." Graham nods. "Good choice."

The rest of the evening goes by smoothly. One of the things Yaz pays extra attention to is the fact that neither Grace or Graham ask anything about whether or not she and Ryan are dating - which is a relief, because she was half expecting it, _her_ family definitely would've gone there instantly if she'd bring someone over for Sunday dinner. But Grace and Graham don't, they just ask her how her classes are going and how she likes her apartment and if the vegetarian food at the cafeteria is half decent. 

Being there, in their home, almost makes Yaz miss her own family. Almost. 

She made another mental note to text them in the family group chat later. 

The way Ryan rolls his eyes at Graham's story about some weird guy he'd met at work today - apparently you saw all kinds of weird things as a bus driver - _almost_ makes her miss Sonya. 

Almost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> consider this a "all the small scenes i didn't know what to do with but wanted to stuff in somewhere" chapter.


	12. the art of fucking around and finding out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta becomes a ghost hunter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im back from the dead and im bringing this fic with me babey

Yaz is almost late for her study group. She had made the (arguably questionable) choice to get coffee from that place Theta liked, and the line was longer than she was expecting, and then when she _finally_ got to the counter she was trying really hard not to second-guess her decision to get coffee for Theta, too.

She liked coffee, Yaz knew this, and she had paid for Yaz's things that one time, so really, she owed her. But was it weird?

Probably not, but it still makes a thin layer of anxiety grow to the inside of her skull.

She shakes away the doubt to her best ability, and adds a large black coffee to her order, with a truly unhealthy amount of sugar to go.

And then she walks back to their apartment building, doing her best to convince herself that this was normal, this wasn't too much or weird or-

She really didn't even know why she was nervous. It was just study group, they had done it before, and there should be nothing weird about it, and coffee was a pretty normal part of studying, right?

No reason to be nervous.

When she reaches the apartment, Theta opens the door looking like she had been in the middle of...something. Her hair is haphazardly pushed back by some sort of large, round goggles, her sleeves are rolled up, and she is wearing what look like gardening gloves, of all things.

"Yaz! Hi! You're early." Theta grins, and brushes the back of her hand against her cheek, wiping away some hairs in a quite useless attempt to get them to stay away from her face.

Yaz smiles back at her, and steps into the apartment, lifting up the paper bag she was holding. "I brought coffee." Then, she toes off her shoes and glances at a clock on the wall. "And I'm not early. You're just late."

She can hear voices in the apartment - Ryan and Amy - and now she _did_ feel a little weird only bringing coffee for Theta and nothing for them, but in her defense, she hadn't thought about that.

Theta glances at the same clock. "Oh." Then, she walks back into the kitchen. "Well, time's a relative concept anyways."

Yaz follows her into the kitchen, and hands the other coffee cup to Theta, who takes if with a slightly confused look on her face.

"You brought coffee for me?" She asks, eyes wide.

_(She wasn’t used to people getting things for her. And she was also quite surprised to find out that Yaz had memorized her coffee order)._

_(It warms her heart way more than a gesture this simple probably should)._

Theta sits back down on the table and pulls the goggles back over her eyes.

"Yeah." Yaz shrugs dismissively, trying to veil that it had actually been fully intentional, and picking up her own cup just to have something to hold. "I was there anyways, and I figured-" She makes a vague hand gesture, not really planning on finishing that sentence anyways.

There are several things happening at once, in the kitchen; Amy is making coffee (normal), Ryan is sitting at their kitchen table digging around the contents of a small toolbox (relatively normal), and the kitchen table was entirely covered in a truly confusing mess of _stuff_.

Even for Theta’s apartment, which could be quite messy and chaotic at times, it seemed, this was exceptionally strange. 

" _What_ are you doing?" 

"I'm making a God helmet." Theta answers, without looking up from the project that was spread over their kitchen table.

Not that Yaz would've been able to see her eyes anyways if she had - not through the dark, round, ridiculous goggles.

"A _what_?"

"A God helmet."

Ryan, who is sitting on a nearby chair with his feet propped up on the next chair over, nods. "Yeah."

Theta waves a small screwdriver in his general direction. "He's here to record the results."

"I'm making a Youtube video."

Yaz furrows her brows and walks over to the table to take a better look at this ' _God helmet'._

It seems to be a motorcycle helmet, which more or less covers the helmet part of the project, but the _god_ part seemed to be a bit of a more of a mystery - there were a lot of wires, and bits of metal, and Yaz was pretty sure she recognized a coil somewhere in there, but that still didn’t explain much.

"Right. And what are the results supposed to be?" She asks, mentally preparing for - whatever ridiculous experiment this was.

Theta grins, and finally looks up from the colorful mess of wires. "I'm trying to see if I can artificially produce the effect of sensed presences by manipulating electromagnetic fields."

"She's going to mess with her brain waves," Ryan translates, and Yaz stares at Theta in shock. "to see if it makes her see ghosts."

"You're _what_?!"

"I'm not! Or, well, I am, but it's not as bad as it sounds! Shouldn't be any more dangerous than standing next to a microwave or eating a few too many bananas. I'm just going to create a tiny electromagnetic field and-"

"And stick your head in it?"

"Yes!"

Yaz squints her eyes, and then turns to look at Ryan. "And you're fine with this? She's gonna electrocute herself, and you're going to put it on Youtube."

Ryan leans back, slowly. "No-one is going to get electrocuted. At least very badly. But yes."

Yaz takes a deep breath, and puts down her bag. " _Why_ , exactly?" She tries to keep her voice as patient as possible, but it was starting to feel like a losing battle.

"Are you familiar with the scientific method, Yaz?" Theta asks, tilting her head a little.

Raising her eyebrows, Yaz digs through her brain for the definition. "...Yeah, like repeating experiments to prove your hypothesis, right?"

Theta nods. "Or, as I like to call it, fuck around and find out."

Yaz just blinks at her.

Leaning to a nearby counter, Amy sighs, pouring herself a cup of coffee. "Is Osgood in on this?"

"Osgood?" Yaz asks, turning to Theta, hoping for some sort of clarification.

"My lab partner. And no."

"Oh," Amy nods, putting down her coffee cup, "so when you accidentally fry your brain, can I have your car?"

Theta puts down her screwdriver, and if possible, furrows her brows under the goggles, in some sort of an offended expression. "No. And why would her being involved make this safer in any way?"

"Because out of the two of you, she's the one who i _haven't_ seen poking a box cutter into the insides of a running computer."

Amy and Theta proceed to have a small staring match, which is strange, considering Theta is still wearing the goggles, and her eyes are completely hidden.

Yaz sighs.

"Again, _why_ are you doing this, exactly?"

Theta looks up from her project, and puts down her tools. Lifting the goggles up to her forehead, she gives Yaz a look that is surprisingly serious. "A lot of people think their houses are haunted. In reality, I think, a lot of it could just be faulty wiring and old pipes, or something."

Yaz furrows her brows at this, and Theta nods at her, trying to drive down her point.

"Have you noticed that the places people say are haunted always fit a very specific category? Old houses, never new ones. And it's always bedrooms and basements and hallways that are haunted, no-one has a haunted bathroom or a haunted greenhouse." She picks up a random screwdriver off the table, and waves it around to emphasize her point. "I think there's a reason behind that. And my bet is that it's not ghosts being picky. It's electromagnetism."

She shrugs with one shoulder. "It's already been hypothesized that certain types of electromagnetic fields can make you feel like you're being haunted. Now, if I can prove that that's the case, and it _isn't_ actually dead people messing with you, wouldn't you want to know? There are a lot of people on the internet losing their sleep over this, selling their houses, feeling like they're constantly being watched, children having terrible nightmares, that sort of thing. Now, if I could make them see that actually, it's just a matter of rewiring some electronics..." She trails off, and Yaz nods slowly.

It _did_ make sense. It started off as a reckless, backwards DIY-mythbusters Youtube special that likely wouldn’t end well, but really? Yaz understood the end point.

She lets out a breath. "Okay then. Let's fuck around and find out."

Theta smiles, all bright and pure and beautiful, and Yaz _really_ hopes that she won't end up electrocuting her brain.

(She makes a mental note to make sure to get Ryan's nan on standby, just in case).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact: the god helmet is an actual thing that exists in the real world, i did not make this up, i just thought it would fit


	13. Must have been the wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Studying together and drinking tea!

Theta doesn't end up electrocuting herself. The most drastic side effect is that her hair is an absolute _mess_ afterwards, and Ryan's Youtube channel gains some momentary popularity in some truly weird corners of the internet.

(Theta does end up sensing some presences, too, which Yaz didn't quite understand, but Theta seemed to be weirdly happy about it, so she guessed it counted as a win).

When Yaz gets back to her own apartment, she instantly goes to dig through her beauty supply cabinet, trying to find that one homemade conditioner Sonya had made for her. There were several jars of it, and Yaz rarely remembered to use it, even though it was supposedly very good for your hair and her sister had left her with instructions to use it at least once a week.

Yaz supposed it might be good for Theta's hair, too, because even though it wasn't anything like Yaz's it _was_ bleached. Yaz also suspected that Theta was the type of person who typically didn’t think about her hair much, and currently it looked like she had been using a balloon as a pillowcase, so really, it couldn’t _hurt_.

She picks up the jar and tries to decide if it's better to go give it to Theta right away, or wait for the next time they saw each other.

Eventually, she ends up on a compromise; leaving it outside her door with a note.

Then, she goes back home and tries her best not to feel like it was a weird thing to do. 

The next time they see each other is in the cafeteria line the next morning before classes start, and Theta's hair _does_ look considerably better. It is no longer static-y and floating in the air to all possible directions, and is, instead, remarkably more shiny and the slightest bit wavy.

Yaz does her best not to stare.

"Thanks." Theta smiles a little and shifts her weight from one side to another. "For the hair stuff."

"No problem." Yaz forces herself to look away and focuses on picking out a tea bag from the dispenser.

"It really helped with the residual static. And it smelled good." Theta continues, "Made my hair smell nice, too. See?"

She sticks her head directly into Yaz's face, and she _does_ smell good, and Yaz forgets how to breathe.

"What was in it?" Theta leans back, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, as if she _hadn't_ just made every coherent thought fly right out of Yaz's head.

It takes Yaz several seconds to remember how to speak and form a sentence.

"Um. Coconut oil. Shea butter. Argan oil, I think? Oh, and Aloe vera." She lists, trying to rack her brain for what _was_ in that stuff.

She was pretty sure she wouldn't get that scent out of her head for a while, it was permanently ingrained in her memory now, and if that was anything to go by, coconut oil was probably the main ingredient.

But Yaz had never paid that much attention to it when it had been in _her_ hair, to be honest, so she wasn’t sure.

Theta smiles, and focuses on filling a truly enormous takeaway cup with coffee.

Yaz is almost grateful when they have to part ways to get to class, because it gives her the opportunity to get lost in her own thoughts without seeming rude or getting caught staring.

Later that day, after several hours of doing her best to focus on her lectures and failing miserably, Yaz was sitting at her desk trying to barf out a semi-coherent essay.

It wasn't going very well, and she started to feel like her brain was rotting, and she was annoyed at herself for being distracted so easily, but also? Theta seemed to be the only thing her brain wanted to think about, at the moment.

Which was very, very distracting.

She tries her best to get at least _some_ schoolwork done, but really, when someone knocks on the door, Yaz is more than happy about the new distraction.

But the universe seemed to be playing some kind of a sick joke on her, because this, too, seemed to be the old distraction.

It was Theta.

And she seems to be fidgeting more than usual, which instantly makes Yaz furrow her brows in worry.

She's rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, and her eyes are darting around like she's searching for something safe to focus on. "So, uh-" She starts, shoving her hands in her pockets.

Yaz leans to the doorway with her head a little tilted, waiting for her to finish. Theta licks her lips, and swallows.

"-Amy brought her boyfriend over and it's, uh, quite loud in there, at the moment." She explains, and Yaz could see the blush beginning to creep up her cheeks. "-And my headphones can only block out so much. And I was wondering, could I hang out here, for a bit?"

Theta's eyes finally settle to meet Yaz's, and Yaz does her best to look compassionate.

"Yeah, of course." She steps aside from the doorway.

"Do you want tea? I was just about to make some." It's a lie, but Theta looks like a warm cup of tea might do her some good. Give her something to hold and focus on.

Theta gives her a weak smile and a quiet _yeah_.

Yaz gets to work putting the kettle on, and somewhere between digging out the tea bags and the sugar, notices that Theta is carrying her laptop under one arm.

"Oh. I have some work to do, do you mind?" Theta says, half-apologetically. "I just have to submit this one paper, but-"

"Oh, yeah, no problem." Yaz brushes it off, trying to get her to relax. "I have an essay to write, too, actually." She shrugs, pulling out her favorite tea mug and motioning for Theta to pick one for herself, too.

"We can just both do our own thing, if you want?" Yaz proposes, and really, she isn't sure if she would get much work done in her presence, but she could always try. She didn't want Theta to feel like she was bothering her by being there, or like she couldn't do her own work.

Theta picks up one of Bill's rainbow mugs and gives Yaz a small smile. She seems to have relaxed, at least a little. "That sounds nice."


	14. Would you rescue me, would you get my back?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta brings home some strays.

"Yaz?"

Theta's voice sounds weird through the phone, and Yaz furrows her brows, putting down her book. "Yeah?"

Theta's quiet for a moment. There's some rustling in the background, like fabric moving against the phone speaker. "Do you know that park between the cafe and the bookstore?"

"...Yeah?" Yaz repeats, vaguely picturing the place in her mind. It wasn't a park as much it was a patch of grass with a couple of trees and a duck pond, but she was pretty sure she knew what Theta was talking about.

"...Can you come over here?" Theta asks, still with a weird tint to her voice, and Yaz can't quite make out _what_ she sounds like. "And can you-" Yaz can practically hear Theta tilt her head, "-bring a cardboard box?"

Yaz takes a deep breath. "How big?" She asks, quietly thinking about the fact that this was really how she reacted. No questions asked. _You say jump I say how high._

"As big as you can easily carry. Preferably about microwave-sized."

"Okay." Yaz says, and Theta quickly disconnects the call with an enthusiastic _thank you!_

Putting her phone away, Yaz takes a moment to truly reflect on her life choices, before walking to the kitchen and digging out the cardboard box their toaster had come in. It wasn't quite as big as a microwave, but it was the biggest one they had, so it would have to do.

She sighs, stuffs her phone and keys in her pockets, and goes to knock on the door of Bill's bedroom. It's not closed, and Yaz peaks her head into the doorway. "Theta's up to something weird." She says, and Bill nods slowly from her spot on her bed, where she was watching some show or the other on her laptop.

"And you're going to help?"

Yaz sighs.

"And I'm going to help."

Bill nods again. "If you're not back before morning, should I call Amy or the police?" She asks, and it sounds mostly sarcastic, but given that Yaz had no idea what exactly she was going to get herself into, she was briefly considering the options in all seriousness.

"Track my phone first." Yaz decides, "Then call Amy."

When she gets to the park, it's not hard to spot Theta.

She is sitting on the ground, hunched over...something.

"What's going on?" Yaz asks, as soon as she's close enough to not have to yell.

Theta turns to look at her. "Yaz!" She calls out, sounding both excited, happy, and slightly concerned at the same time.

Crouching down onto the ground next to her, Yaz can see what Theta was hunched over;

Kittens.

There are three exceptionally small and fluffy kittens crawling on the ground, and Theta was softly guiding them away from the duck pond.

They are adorable, and Yaz's heart maybe melts a little at how gentle Theta is with them.

"Kittens?" Yaz asks, and it's more rhetorical than anything.

" _Kittens_." Theta says, in a voice that sounds like she had just discovered a new color.

Yaz sits on the ground next to her, and Theta scoops one of the kittens into her hands, protecting it from getting too close to the water. One of the kittens wobbles to sniff Yaz, and somehow the tiny action fills her heart with absolute joy.

And then there is a very, very small _meow_ , and another kitten peaks their head out of the pocket of Theta's jacket.

"How many kittens are there?" Yaz asks, even though, rationally, she knows she should probably be asking _where did the kittens come from._

"Five." Theta answers, nonchalantly.

Yaz looks over the scene.

"Where's the fifth one?"

"Inside my hood. Asleep, I think."

Yaz takes a deep breath, and gently traps a kitten between her hands, preventing it from wandering too far.

She spends a moment just marveling at how cute the kittens were, and Theta does the same, studying them with her eyes wide.

Eventually Yaz gives in. "Where did the kittens come from, Theta?"

"From a larger cat, I'd imagine." She answers, not lifting her eyes up from the kitten that was currently curled up in her lap. Instead, she is focused on very carefully petting it with only one finger.

Yaz takes a deep breath. "I know _that_. But what are they doing here and why are you playing the role of mum cat?"

Theta hums quietly. "Because mum cat number one abandoned them."

Yaz furrows her brows, emotionally hurt at the mere idea that _anybody_ would abandon five kittens.

"I did some research." Theta continues, "There's a house in this area that's infamous for abandoning cats. I think these kittens are from there."

Yaz makes a sympathetic sound, and one of the kittens crawls into her lap and into the pocket of her hoodie. "Poor things."

The kitten in Theta's lap meows quietly.

"What now?" Yaz asks, because as marvelous and pleasant as this is, they can't sit on the lawn forever. Besides, the kittens were probably hungry, and some of them looked like they should probably see a vet.

Theta hums as a sort of non-response. "I was thinking we could take them to a shelter in the morning."

"And before that?"

Theta looks up and smiles at her, absolutely beaming. "That's why you have a box." She stretches her legs a little, and the kitten in her lap crawls back into her pocket. "We're taking them home."

Yaz's heart maybe melts a little bit more.

With all the kittens safely in the cardboard box, they, very carefully, walk back to their apartment building.

Thankfully it's not a long trip, and it turns out Theta had sent Amy out to buy cat food, so by the time they get there, the place is set for their five new cat babies.

On one hand, Yaz hated the idea of having to take them to a shelter in the morning, because they were _very_ cute and Theta had already named all of them, but realistically, she knew they couldn't just adopt five kittens. It was probably against campus rules, and five cats was a lot, and really, they would probably need to be vaccinated and microchipped-

But as for tonight, they can order takeout and sit on the floor with the kittens. One of them instantly takes a liking to Amy, who tries her best to not get attached, or at least pretends like she is, but ends up with a kitten curled up in her lap for the rest of the evening anyways.

Yaz texts Bill not to worry, and come by if she wants to hang out with some kittens, which, of course, she does.

She also calls Ryan to ask if his gradparents would happen to want to adopt a few cats. He says he doesn't know, but promises to ask.

Theta says she'll try to convince her physics professor to adopt one. Apparently he's a grumpy old man who absolutely wouldn't want one, or at least admit he did, but Theta still thinks a kitten would be good for him.

They might have to take the kittens away in the morning. But for tonight, they had five little cat children, and they were all enjoying the experience wholeheartedly.

And without really quite understanding why, Yaz was wholeheartedly enjoying watching Theta gently play with the kittens, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is brought to you by: the thirteen discord group and that one time i found 4 abandoned kittens and all of them instantly crawled into my pockets so i just sat there on the ground not knowing what to do  
> (sadly i didn't have a cute girl to call for help though)


	15. I promise you we'll be fine (got the universe on your side)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta is sick.   
> Yaz helps.

Next Monday, Theta scrambles out of bed, a little too late, as always.

There's a very annoying banging on the inside of her skull, and she feels more tired than a corpse, but vector analysis waits for no-one, so she has to drag herself out from under the covers anyways.

She only falls to the floor once in the process.

Pulling on the closest pair of pants, she decides that the shirt she slept in is going to be good enough, and stumbles out of the door and into the kitchen, planning on getting a cup of hot, too-strong and too-bitter instant coffee with too many sugars to go.

Amy, who is sitting at the table like a civilized person, takes one look at her before crossing her arms. "No. Absolutely not. Back to bed."

"What?" Theta furrows her brows in tired confusion. "I have to get to class!"

Amy raises a single eyebrow, and somewhere in the back of her head Theta thinks this makes her look like a teacher who knows that you're trying to cheat in a test. Or maybe it just makes her look like a mother of several rowdy children. Theta wouldn't know the difference. "You look like you're gonna fall over in, hmm, the next two minutes."

Theta frowns at this, and tries extra hard to look like she didn't just fall out of her bed.

"I'm fine."

"I _bet_ you're not."

Theta squints her eyes at her, and walks towards the kitchen. "I'm fine! I just need some coffee and then I'm good to go."

She tries to ignore the headache, and the tiredness, and the terrible, dull nausea that was starting to creep up her spine.

(Previously, she hadn't been aware you _could_ feel nausea in your spine. She would have rather continued living in that blissful ignorance, if the universe had given her a choice, because this was not a pleasant experience at _all_.)

Amy sighs. "No. You need to rest." She says, and Theta fights the urge to roll her eyes.

"I'm fi-"

Amy tilts her head in a small, slow motion. She grabs the nearest non-breakable object, which happens to be a grapefruit, and throws it at Theta. "Catch." She says in a tone that sounds so serious it's borderline sarcastic.

Theta doesn't catch it - it hits her square in the right shoulder, and she even flinches a little too late. It would be comical, really, if she didn't feel so miserable.

Amy sighs. 

"This is what you get for not taking care of yourself. You _need_ to rest, Theta. I won't have you crash in some hallway or fall down a flight of stairs or something. Or do we need to talk about that time you fell through a _roof_?"

Amy looks at her with all the sternness she could muster, and for a moment Theta wonders if this was what it would've been like to have a proper mom. Someone who actually cared. 

"You're going to go back to bed, and you're going to _rest_." Amy stands up and puts down her cup. "I'm going to bring you breakfast, a normal _human_ breakfast with _food_ and not just that terrible tar of a coffee you drink, and you're going to _eat_ it, and then you are going to _rest_."

"But-"

"And you're also going to eat the lunch I made. The soup in the fridge better be gone when I get back from my lectures."

Theta squints her eyes a little. She's still standing her ground, but she lets her shoulders sag a bit.

She didn't like admitting that she wasn't feeling well. That meant admitting weakness, and that meant that you _had_ a weakness, and that meant-

_But the idea of spending the day in bed does sound like heaven, at the moment._

And the fact that Amy had made her soup warms her heart, a little bit. She wasn't used to people doing things for her. Not like that. 

"I have class though. Mandatory attendance." She says, almost deflating with the words, the tired disappointment creeping into her voice.

"Don't worry about that. I took care of it."

Theta furrows her brows at Amy. "You...took care of it?" She repeats, confused.

Amy shrugs with one shoulder and opens the fridge to pull out some orange juice. "I texted Osgood. She'll take notes for you and get you your stupid little attendance points."

Theta just blinks at her a few times. "She will?"

"She will." Amy nods. "You know, a lot of people are willing to help you if you just _ask_."

Theta takes a very deep breath, then mumbles a _thank you_ , pushes her hands to her pockets, turns around, and walks back to her room.

Amy soon follows, carrying a tray that was covered in mismatched cups and bowls. Cereal, toast, juice, and tea. And a water bottle.

"You better drink all of this. You need your fluids." Amy says, setting down the tray next to her.

"And I queued up some scifi movies for you." She then adds, with her voice much softer now. "Please rest, Theta. It'll only get worse if you don't."

This makes something soft and fuzzy take root in Theta's chest - she wasn't used to being taken care of, and while this wasn't surprising given Amy's past performance record, Theta was still a little surprised that someone actually _cared_ about her like this. Without having to. Without ulterior motives. Just because. And that Amy had noticed she watched scifi whenever she wasn't feeling good? Amy had noticed, and remembered, and then did what she could to make her feel better.

Yeah. Theta wasn't used to this.

She takes a deep breath and nods, looking over the tray. Trying to keep all her emotions inside.

Theta frowns at the orange juice. "It's got bits in it."

"Yeah, that would be the _orange_." Amy says, leaning away and rolling her eyes. Then, a little apologetically, adds: "It's all we had. Besides, the bits are good for you."

Theta doesn't argue. She knows Amy's right.

She still doesn't like the bits though.

Then Amy leaves Theta in the dim room, takes a deep breath, and leaves for the day.

As soon as she closes the front door she walks right to the next door over.

Yaz opens the door, which is convenient, because she happens to be just who Amy was looking for.

"Hi. Sorry if this is a bit weird, but Theta's sick. I made her soup, but I'm pretty sure she won't eat it unless someone's there to hold her accountable." Amy explains, twirling her fingers around the strap of her bag. "And I have classes all day. Could you check up on her at some point, if you've got the time?"

Yaz's eyes widen with worry. "Yeah, 'course. I have a morning lecture, but I'll be out before noon. I can go check on her."

Amy gives her a soft smile. "Thank you." She adjusts the strap of her book bag. "It's nothing serious, but like the idiot she is, she went out to donate blood yesterday, and then decided to walk home instead of taking the bus or calling one of us for a ride, and then she didn't drink enough fluids to make up for the blood she lost -" Amy explains with a wave of her hand, and then gives Yaz an apologetic smile.

"She just doesn't really know how to take care of herself." She adds, softly, before glancing at the watch on her wrist. "Shit, I have to run. Don't worry too much, she should be fine, I left her with a queue of several hours worth of scifi movies - she likes to watch those when she's sick - and enough water and juice to fill a kiddie pool, should be fine, just make sure she eats the soup, okay?"

Yaz takes a breath and nods. "Yeah. I'll go over there when I get back from my lectures."

Amy smiles at her. "Thank you." She hands over a key - presumably their spare one - and Yaz takes it, carefully. "Oh, and Theta installed an extra lock on the front door. It works with facial recognition and she set it to _'friends only'_ , so it should let you in, but in case it doesn't, the key should work either way."

Yaz blinks at her a few times.

She wasn't exactly surprised - or maybe she was, but shouldn't have been, because really, that did seem like the kind of thing Theta would do.

"Okay." Yaz manages to answer, "Got it."

Amy smiles at her, turns to leave, and a few steps away, turns around again. "Oh, and if you have any orange juice _without_ bits in it, could you bring her some?"

Yaz raises her eyebrows, and nods. "Sure."

She tries her best not to worry.

Without much success.

Her morning lecture - which was supposed to be about the correct language to use in legal documents - was mainly spent worrying over Theta. Logically, Yaz knew she wasn't _sick_ sick, but she still didn't like the idea of her being unwell at all.

As soon as the professor ends the lecture - five minutes late - Yaz hurries out of the hall and straight to the nearest convenience store. There were several small shops around the campus, and thankfully, one of them happened to be right on her route.

She picks up some orange juice - organic and without bits in it, and also grabs some instant hot chocolate. She wasn't sure if Theta liked hot chocolate, but really, it didn't seem like it could make the situation any worse, at least. She also tosses in a pack of biscuits on her way to the register, just for good measure.

The facial recognition lets her in. Yaz wasn't quite sure how, but it does, so she decides not to question it.

When Yaz walks into the apartment, she can hear Theta talking to herself.

_Okay, so that's not a good sign. Probably._

It could have also been totally normal for Theta, she wouldn't put it past her, and besides, lots of people talked to themselves, right?

"Hello?" Yaz calls out, a little unsure. She _was_ in someone else's apartment, and it made her feel a little bit like an intruder. Even if she did have permission to be there.

Theta doesn't answer, and Yaz can hear her mumbling something about matemathics, circles, and the government in the next room.

Yaz toes off her shoes, shrugs off her coat, and walks to the door of Theta's bedroom.

"-do you _know_ what happens when you fire nuclear missiles into dark matter? I don't, but it's not super good for regular matter, so you probably might want to reconsider that, you-"

The door is cracked open, and Yaz knocks softly on the side of the doorway.

Okay, so Theta wasn't talking to herself - she was talking to the TV. That was slightly less worrying, probably.

"-Oh. Yaz? What're you doing here?" Theta lifts her head up from the impressive pile of covers she was practically submerged in.

Yaz lifts the shopping bag a little. "Brought you some stuff. Also Amy told me to check up on you. Make sure you ate your soup."

Theta groans. "I don't need a _babysitter_."

"How are you feeling?"

"....I'm fine."

"Did you eat your soup?"

A silent moment passes by, and it serves as and answer to her question.

"I'm not hungry."

Yaz raises an eyebrow a little.

"I've just been laying here all day, not doing anything. I've burned _negative_ calories, Yaz."

Yaz walks properly into the room, and sets down the shopping bag. "I brought orange juice without bits in it. And some biscuits."

Theta's eyes light up a little at the mention of biscuits, and Yaz tilts her head. "You can have the biscuits if you eat your soup."

Theta sighs deeply, and sinks a little more deeply into her bed. "Fine."

Yaz smiles.

Soon, Theta is sitting up on her bed, holding a steaming bowl of soup. Yaz sits on an office chair next to a desk in her room, swinging from side to side slowly.

"What are you watching?" She asks, as some weird, dark octopus-like creatures appear on the TV screen, floating in a mist-filled tank of some sort.

"Amy queued up some scifi movies for me." Theta explains with a small half-shrug. "I think she picked the worst ones on purpose. This one's about weird time-altering squid aliens that are sorta telepathic, but not really."

Yaz squints her eyes and just stares at Theta for a moment. "Okay," she then says, a little confused, "that sounds like...a lot."

Theta nods quietly, eyes glued to the screen, sipping her soup.

"Surprisingly, not as bad as it sounds. On a scale from Jupiter Ascending to The Martian this one's like a solid six and a half."

Yaz doesn't ask about the specific structure of that scale - she felt like she might not have understood it, anyways. Instead, she just nods a little. 

She stays to keep Theta company until she falls asleep, and maybe for a bit after that, too.


	16. Every time my world needs saving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yaz accidentally spills tea on her laptop.

It is very late at night, and Yaz is very tired. She's been studying for who knows how many hours now, trying to finish writing this one last miserable essay that's due at midnight-

and then she knocks over her tea cup and spills it all over the keyboard of her laptop. 

And her brain freezes, the anxiety spreading to her veins like ice.

In her panic, she does the first thing that comes to mind;

She calls Theta. 

Somewhere between digging out her phone and dialing, she manages to shut down her laptop, because even though she didn't know if that would do it any good at this point, it felt like a good thing to do. A running wet electronic device is worse than a powered down one, right?

Theta picks up almost instantly. 

"Yaz?"

"I spilled tea on my computer!" She instantly explains, so rushed that it feels like the words are bumping into each other.

There's some rustling on the other end of the line, and then Theta seems to kick into Problem Solving Mode. 

"Did you shut it off? Because you need to shut it off."

"Yes," Yaz answers before Theta has even finished the sentence.

"Okay, now turn it upside down so it'll drain out. What model is it?"

"Uh-" Yaz starts, shuffling to flip her laptop upside down, as instructed. "I don't know?" She says, distressed. How was she supposed to know that? Her parents had bought it and she knew how to use it, but that was the extent of her knowledge.

"Are there tiny screws in the bottom of the case?" Theta asks, and then there's more rustling on her end of the line, and a muffled bang that sounds suspiciously much like something falling to the floor.

"Uh, yes."

"I'll be right there."

And she is, quite literally, at her door in less than a minute. 

Dressed in her pyjamas and with no shoes on, and carrying a small toolbox.

"I was writing an essay and-" Yaz starts, as she lets her in. 

"You don't put sugar in your tea, right?" Theta answers, already walking towards her room.

"No." Yaz follows after her.

"That's good."

Theta sets down her tools and peers over the laptop - now miserably upside down on the table. "Oh, this is good. I can get this open. Good." She says, and it sounds like she's mostly talking to herself now.

She rummages around the toolbox, picking out a few different remarkably tiny screwdrivers, and then she sits down, and starts to unscrew the casing open. 

"Could you get a towel?" She asks, without looking up. 

"Uh, yeah." 

Yaz is trying her best not to freak out, and is happy to be able to do _something_ to help. She had said it looked good though, right? So maybe her laptop wasn't completely fucked?

By the time she gets back with a towel, Theta has opened the casing, and pulled out some part or another, connected to the rest of the laptop's insides by a bunch of colorful wires. Yaz thinks it looks _terrifying_ , because _all her stuff is on there_ and now her laptop is wet _and in multiple pieces_ , but Theta seems to know what she's doing, so Yaz does her best to not let this freak her out more. 

"Thanks." Theta mutters, taking the towel and very carefully lifting the laptop to get it under the keyboard. Then, she inspects the parts for a while, and places the tiny screws aside. 

"You shut the power off pretty quickly, right?"

"Yeah?"

Theta nods. "It looks pretty good. I took the battery out, breaking the circuit."

That didn't _sound_ very good, but Yaz doesn't really know enough to argue.

"There doesn't seem to be much damage. Not that I can see, anyways. It's lucky that this model was built like this, easy to open and easy to clean." She gestures towards the opened-up casing with her screwdriver. "I think it should survive this." 

Yaz is so relieved to hear that that feels like she deflates with the next exhale.

"Lucky you don't use sugar, too. That would've made things worse. Sticky. But this looks pretty good, should be fine." Theta continues, matter-of factly. 

"Thank you." Yaz breathes out.

Theta looks up and smiles at her. 

"You should give it time to dry out, leave it like this for a day or so. I'll come back tomorrow and put it back together."

And with that, some of Yaz's anxiety rises to the surface again; what was she supposed to do until then? Not turn in that essay she just spent all night writing? 

"I have to turn in an essay tonight, before midnight-" She starts, the realization hitting her like a truck. "It's worth 50 percent of my grade!"

Theta looks at her, and nods slowly. Then she tilts her head and licks her lips. "That's a problem."

"Yes, it is!"

"Did you upload it to a cloud? Or a USB drive?"

"Uh, yeah, it should be- I mean if it saved before I turned it off-" She rambles, trying to get her thoughts together. 

Theta smiles at her gently, and Yaz relaxes, a little bit. 

"You can borrow mine." She shrugs, and for the second time that night, Yaz thinks;

_You are a lifesaver._

And this time she, half-accidentally, says it out loud. 

Theta grins, and then focuses on packing up her tools again. 

"Do you want to come over to finish your thing or do you want me to bring my laptop over? I don't need it until tomorrow." 

Yaz takes a deep breath, thinking it over. "I can come over. Shouldn't be much work left, should be almost done, I just need to submit it, really."

Theta nods. 

Yaz gathers up her notes, and hopes with all her might that the essay had saved to the cloud, and then she follows Theta out of the apartment and into the next one over. 

In her room, Theta digs out her own laptop from under a pile of papers full of colorful, very messy notes, and powers it up. She gives Yaz a small smile, and hands the computer over soon after. 

A little awkwardly, Yaz sits at her table, and tries her very best not to disturb the seemingly non-organized chaos thing Theta had going on. 

"Do you want to be alone? I can leave if you want to work in peace-" Theta asks, as if this wasn't _her bedroom._

"No, it's alright. It's your room, I don't want to drive you out of here." Yaz says, a little apologetically. She did feel bad disturbing her this late at night. "I don't have much left to do, honest. I just need to find it and submit it."

"I could always go bug Amy."

"Is she awake?"

"No."

Yaz turns to look at her, and Theta looks back at her, silently. 

"You don't have to go anywhere." Yaz concludes, and Theta gives her a weak smile.

Then, she sits on her bed cross-legged, and picks up the old Nintendo DS from her bedside table, and opens it with a quiet _click_. 

"If you're sure."

"I'm sure." Yaz nods, before shifting her full focus on finding out what was left of her work. 

It seems to have survived, and quietly, Yaz thanks whoever came up with cloud storage and automatic saving.

And after proofreading her essay one last time, she goes to turn it in. 

Working on someone else's computer feels weird, personal, somehow, and she keeps hitting wrong keys because of the different scaling, and Yaz is quietly terrified she's accidentally going to invade Theta's privacy somehow, see something she isn't supposed to see.

Theta, however, doesn't seem too worried about this, completely submerged in her game now. So Yaz works in silence, hoping everything goes smoothly. 

It does. Every once in a while, Theta's game makes a quiet _bing_ sound, which is somehow comforting in the quiet room, reminding Yaz of her presence.

Yaz manages to turn in her essay with no further problems. 

She closes all the tabs, leans back on Theta's office chair, and sighs, the stress of the night starting to fade out. 

Theta has glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, and while Yaz couldn't tell for sure, she suspected they were in the shapes of actual constellations. 

"You got everything done?" Theta asks, and Yaz turns to look at her. She hasn't looked up from her game.

"Yeah." She breathes out. "Thanks for letting me borrow your computer." 

"No problem." Theta smiles at her, and her game makes a _bing_ sound again. 

Yaz almost wants to ask about it, about what she's playing, but she also doesn't want to overstay her welcome. It _was_ late.

"I should probably get out of your hair." She says, starting to get up from the chair. 

Theta looks at her, as if she wants to say something, but doesn't quite know how to. She just nods, and after a moment, breathes out a quiet _okay_. 

"I'll come put your laptop back together tomorrow." She continues, her voice soft.

"Thank you."

Immediately after leaving Theta's room, Yaz runs into Amy, _who wasn't even supposed to be awake this late_ , and it makes her feel like a deer in headlights.

Amy raises a brow at her. 

Then, when Yaz doesn't know what to say or do, Amy smiles, and goes back to her own room without saying a word. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: this IS in fact accurate on the terms of what you should do if you spill tea/coffee/etc on your computer. You should shut it down and turn it upside down to let the liquid drain out of the keyboard, so it doesn't do any further damage. Then if possible, you should take out the battery, and let it dry out for at least 24 hours before putting it back together. I know this because I am an idiot that has spilled coffee on her laptop in the past.


	17. Tonight we are victorious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta puts Yaz's laptop back together, Yaz has Feelings, and Theta invites Yaz to join her pub quiz team.

As promised, Theta comes back the next day to put Yaz's laptop back together. 

The whole time, Yaz is quietly hoping that by some miracle, her computer will be completely fine after this. 

Theta had told her not to worry about it, but that hadn't helped much. 

She had said it would probably be fine, but apparently she couldn't be sure until it was up and running again. 

_If_ it would start running again. 

The anxiety buzzes just under Yaz's skin. She is, understandably, nervous. 

Theta doesn't seem to be; she focuses on the tiny screws with calm, steady hands, and somewhere in the back of her head Yaz realizes that when Theta is working, she is remarkably still. Calmer than usual. _Quieter_ than usual.

She connects all the parts back together with a soft click and a few screws, before putting the casing back together. 

And then she turns it on. 

And it does turn on, with a worryingly loud whirring sound, but it _does_ turn on. 

And it's like some of Yaz's anxiety evaporates into thin air.

"The keys are a bit sticky, but otherwise it seems to be fine." Theta says, nonchalantly, without looking up from the computer, testing the keys to see if they all work. 

"I could bloody kiss you." Yaz blurts out, without quite meaning to. 

Theta freezes, and her fingers stop moving on the keyboard.

She licks her lips. 

And Yaz realizes what she'd said.

"Just and expression." She tries to save the situation, spiraling into a quiet internal panic.

Sure, maybe it was true, but she didn't want _her_ to know that. 

Theta sits up a little straighter, in one slow movement that looks uncharacteristically calculated. "I know."

Then, after a small, stuffy silence, she continues;

"You should really clean out the dust from under your keyboard more often."

Yaz takes a deep breath, trying to bring her brain back from the edge of panic, reeling her anxiety back in, with questionable success. "You know normal people don't usually open up their laptops and pull out the insides, right?"

Theta shrugs, still avoiding eye contact. "They should." 

She packs up her screwdrivers again, with gentle motions and unwavering focus. "I can do it for you, if you want." 

"Thanks." Yaz answers, and it feels a little hollow.

Like the air in the room is standing still.

  
When Theta is already halfway out of the apartment, she turns on her heels to face Yaz again, and the movement is so sudden that for a moment, she looks like she might fall over.

"Do you want to join our pub quiz team?" She asks, and Yaz isn't sure what she was expecting, but it wasn't that. 

"What?"

"And Bill, too, if she wants. She can join too." Theta continues, before Yaz has even fully registered what she was talking about.

"Pub quiz team?" Yaz repeats.

"Yeah." Theta shifts her weight from one side to the other, and Yaz is pretty sure that if she hadn't been carrying the tools, she would have shoved her hands in her pockets at this point. "We have a team, we go every month." Then she smiles and adds; 

"Reigning champions."

Yaz nods slowly. She's not surprised, after seeing what they were like with Trivial Pursuit. 

"The next quiz is Friday night." Theta continues, now looking at Yaz carefully. 

Yaz tilts her head, thinking it over.

She wasn't really a big fan of pubs, but other than that? It sounded like a pretty good idea. 

Spending a night out with Theta and her friends didn't sound bad at all. And she _had_ enjoyed their game night.

"Sure, why not." She finally answers, and Theta seems to relax slightly.

"Oh, good. See you then, then?"

"See you then." Yaz repeats with a small smile. 

And with that, Theta answers her smile, and goes back to her own apartment.

  
Friday night rolls around, and Yaz is putting way too much effort into her appearance. She knows it, and she feels silly over it, and she's also pretty sure Theta is the type of person that wouldn't care (or necessarily even notice) if she was wearing a trash bag instead of a shirt. 

She's not sure if that's a reassuring thought or not. 

It probably should be, but then again, Yaz is also pretty sure she shouldn't be this concerned about Theta's opinions or lack thereof anyways. 

She ends up wearing all black, and her red leather jacket, and lipstick that matched, and trying her best to make it look like she isn't trying as hard as she really is. 

Bill doesn't comment on this, but smiles like she wants to. Yaz is relieved that she doesn't have to explain herself out loud - it's not like she'd know how to properly put it to words if she tried - but thankfully, Bill seemed to have some sort of lesbian spider-sense regarding these things. 

Yaz feels like she's been fizzing with nervous, expectant energy all day, and when a knock on their door interrupts her final, useless attempts at smoothing out her hair in front of the mirror, she's thankful for the distraction. 

On the other side of the door, Theta and her friends are waiting. Or, _waiting_ is probably a bit generous; Theta is waiting in front of the door. Amy is pulling Rory behind her down the hallway, and Clara is following them, talking about something or the other so fast that Yaz can't make out a single word.

"Ready?" Theta asks, and Yaz focuses on her, and then she has to consciously focus on _not staring_.

Theta is not wearing colorful, loose clothes like usual. There's no weird print T-shirts or a single rainbow on sight. She is wearing tight black jeans and black boots - Doc Martens - and a plain white top under a black slightly over-sized jacket that seemed to be a weird mix somewhere between a suit and a biker jacket. And somehow it works on her _perfectly_. Her hair is slightly wavy again, now looking more like it was like that on purpose, and she is wearing a single golden chain earring that catches the light when she tilts her head.

She, too, has put effort into her appearance. 

"Ready." Bill answers on Yaz's behalf, pushing past her into the hallway, and then dragging Yaz with her. 

  
The walk to the pub isn't long. Theta spends it explaining the rules to Bill and Yaz, and really, it sounds like a pretty standard pub quiz - a lot less complicated than the game nights at Theta's flat - but Yaz is grateful for the explanation anyways. It calms down her nerves, and to be honest, she would happily listen to Theta even if she was talking about different types of cigarette ash. 

By the time they get to the pub, find a table and get their drinks, the whole place is packed with people - mostly students - getting ready for the quiz. It seemed to be a popular event, and Theta's team (she called them _The FAM_ , and Yaz wasn't really sure what it stood for, the answer was different every time she asked) seemed to recognize some of the other teams. At one point, Theta throws a crumbled up piece of paper to a neighboring table for no other reason than to announce her presence and tell them that she was there to win, again. 

They seemed to be the reigning champions, like Theta had said. It didn't seem to be a very serious competition, but Theta seemed to be proud of the title anyways. Besides, the first prize was apparently free food and drinks at the bar, and that didn't sound like a bad thing to win, when you're a penniless student. 

The whole pub is buzzing with energy, and Yaz feels like it matches the energy buzzing inside her. 

And then the quiz starts, and everyone quiets down, and Theta settles next to Yaz and she tries very hard to ignore the way their thighs press together, because she's pretty sure that if she let herself focus on that she might not be able to think about anything else for the rest of the evening.

The point of contact doesn't last long - Theta shifts in her place, and lifts her feet off of the floor, rearranging her legs to some sort of a human pretzel formation on her seat. 

"What is Scooby Doo's full name?" The guy holding the quiz asks, and Yaz looks at him with her eyebrows raised. Then, she turns to look at the rest of the group. 

They are all staring at each other quietly too, for a second or so. 

"Scoobert Doo." Rory says, in a remarkably casual voice. 

Amy looks at her with her eyebrows furrowed. "Scoobert? Really?"

Theta shrugs, and scribbles it down on the answer sheet.

And then, as soon as the pen leaves the paper, Clara snatches it from her. "Give it here. No-one can read your handwriting."

Theta makes a quiet, offended sound, but before she has time to argue, the man presents the next question;

"How many bones does an adult human have?" 

"Depends on what kind of a day you're having." Theta says, and Clara rolls her eyes a little. 

"It's two hundred and six. Right?" Clara answers, mostly ignoring Theta, already writing down the answer.

Rory agrees quietly, even though it seems to be mostly pointless at this point. 

The man asking the questions makes some joke about breaking bones, but Yaz doesn't really hear it, because Theta is rolling up the sleeves of her jacket.

"How many planets are in our solar system?" The man asks, with an elaborate hang gesture towards the ceiling.

"Eight." Theta answers, without looking up from her hands, focused on turning the fabric over.

"Are you not counting Pluto?" Clara counters.

"No." Theta answers, voice light.

"Rude."

Theta shrugs, with a small smile on her lips. "I'm assuming the right answer here is the nationally recognized one. Besides, it's a bit hazy, we have to draw the line _somewhere_. If we took Pluto back, we would technically have to take back all the other dwarf planets, too. So unless someone finds planet nine, we're officially stuck at eight." She explains quietly, despite the fact that Clara has already written down the answer and didn't seem to _actually_ disagree. 

"What is the collective noun for a group of unicorns?" The quiz host asks.

Bill's eyes light up and she leans to the table. "A blessing!"

Clara turns to look at her. "Is that a fact or an opinion?" 

"It's a fact! That's a thing!" Bill continues, sounding excited and at the same time, almost a little offended.

Clara nods slowly.

"I would love to know who is the leading authority on this." Theta comments, leaning to the table, too. 

"So are we going with blessing?" Amy asks after a quiet moment, sounding a little confused. 

"It's good enough for me." Clara shrugs. 

She writes it down.

"Which famous scientist experimented by poking needles into their own eyes?"

Yaz grimaces at the thought. So does Amy, mirroring her expression from the other side of the table.

"Isaac Newton." Theta says, as if it was obvious. 

They all turn to look at her. 

"He was studying light. Lens optics." She explains with a small shrug, and demonstrates by poking her finger dangerously close to her own eye.

Amy makes a quiet, disgusted sound and leans back. "Gross."

" _Why_?" Yaz asks, and Theta turns to look at her. 

"He wanted to know how light works." She continues, now with a small smile and her voice considerably more gentle. 

Yaz blinks at her. "Please never follow in his footsteps." 

Theta's smile widens a little. "Don't worry. I don't have to, he did that for me. That's how science works."

"That's how science works." Amy repeats, sarcastically, "By people poking needles into their eyes?"

Theta rolls her eyes and turns to look at Amy again. "By figuring out how things work so future people can use that information to their advantage." 

The quiz leader makes some announcement, and apparently, the next few questions are music and picture related, and quietly, Yaz is pleased, because it seems like all that time she had spent bindge-watching TV will finally amount to something.

She and Bill recognize a few actors and movies based on the pictures, and Yaz has listened to enough radio to recognize popular singers by their voice. 

She likes feeling useful, and like she's helping, and she likes the way Theta looks at her when she knows the correct answer. 

The night floats by fast, and Yaz doesn't really even realize how late it is by the time the quiz is done. 

She feels like she's floating, too. 

Their team wins, and Theta grins, and the happiness warms something in Yaz's veins. 

They get their free food and drinks and Theta spends at least ten minutes talking about planets and what really constitutes as one and what doesn't. 

Yaz doesn't fully understand the categorizing, but she's happy to listen, anyways. 


	18. Don't trust a perfect person

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta punches a man

Theta knows she shouldn't stay up this late when she has work in the morning. Getting up at the crack of dawn wasn't exactly her favorite thing, even if she _did_ like her job, and the paycheck that came with it. Still, she knew she probably should have gone to sleep hours ago. But pub quiz nights were an exception, and she allowed herself to have this with the excuse of _I can always drink more coffee tomorrow._

Besides, she doesn't want to cut the night short. 

So she's in no rush to leave the pub, because having all her friends there is nice, and everyone is having fun, and when she talks about planet nine Yaz smiles at her like it's the most interesting thing she's heard all day. 

When they finally leave, the air outside is damp with mist and the sky is dark. Or, as dark as it ever gets in the city. 

Amy and Rory are walking together like some sort of a four-legged two-headed creature, and Bill and Clara have somehow ended up in an intense discussion about the Vatican. Theta isn't sure what it is about exactly, and she doesn't really even care, at this point, because a natural progression of this is that she falls in step with Yaz, trailing behind the rest of them.

Somewhere a little further down the road, Amy starts singing.

Theta smiles, but doesn't say anything, and instead decides to enjoy the night air and this relatively peaceful moment. Walking outside at night always felt like it cleared her head, somehow, and she wasn't complaining about the company, either. 

The road wasn't long; Theta was pretty sure all her friends would make it home even if they didn't stick together. 

So they walk, mainly in silence. Theta stops to pet a stray cat, and Yaz makes a comment about how they're _not_ taking it home. 

(It's probably mostly a joke, and Theta smiles, not arguing. She talks to the cat for a while, and Yaz lingers nearby patiently). 

The streets are empty, and quiet. There aren't that many people around, this late at night. Only the occasional students, like them, coming or going on their Friday night adventures. A group of girls dressed entirely in glitter from head to toe pass them by, yelling out compliments to everyone they saw with heart-warming cheer and honesty, and when they see the stray cat, the whole group erupts in high-pitched sounds of what Theta was assuming to be mostly happiness.

The next person they see is an angry-looking man walking towards them, and Theta's first instinct is to walk a little closer to Yaz. She isn't quite sure why, but for a moment, she wants to wrap her arm over Yaz's shoulders.

She doesn't. 

Instead, she watches the man, carefully. She didn't like his vibe, and she didn't like the way he looked at them. By the time the man is close enough to pass them by on the street, the skin at the back of Theta's neck is crawling.

Then, three things happen in very rapid succession; 

One: The man spits a very ugly insult Yaz's way.

Two: Yaz flinches.

Three: Theta punches him in the throat.

He falters and stumbles backwards, and makes a very unpleasant choking sound, and really, Theta hadn't meant to hit him _that_ hard, but maybe he was just being dramatic.

Theta isn't sure what for, but she takes another step towards the man, who is now gasping for breath. The adrenaline is buzzing under her skin, like static electricity on an old TV screen, and it's clouding all her senses.

She really isn't sure what she's doing, she hadn't even planned what had happened so far, it was all purely on instinct.

And that scared her, a bit.

It had been a long time since she had been in a fight, but apparently the reflexes were still there.

She isn't sure how she feels about that.

She is still running on autopilot when she takes another step towards him, bares her teeth in a snarl to - she isn't sure _what_ she was going to say, but it probably wasn't anything pretty-

and then Yaz grabs her hand and pulls her back.

"Come on. He's not worth it." She says, voice quiet and somehow a little bit hollow. 

For a single heartbeat, Theta's mind clears for a bit.

She's right. He isn't. 

And she knew, logically, that right now the most important thing was to get out of there. Get back home. 

There was no telling what the man would do next. 

So she nods, and turns, and lets Yaz pull her along and back to their route home.

The adrenaline is still fizzing in her veins, and she does her best to ignore it. 

Yaz's hand in hers is a pretty good distraction.

  
When they get to their apartment building, Theta still feels like her head is buzzing, and Yaz still looks shaken, too, and she keeps avoiding eye contact, and the fact that she was doing so much of it that even Theta notices is saying something.

"Are you alright?" Theta asks quietly, tilting her head carefully.

"Yeah." Yaz breathes out, and it sounds way too light to be true. 

Theta studies her face for a bit. She really wasn't sure what she should do here - she wasn't the best at deciphering social situations, and she wasn't sure if Yaz would rather be alone, or with Bill, maybe, rather than with her, and Theta really wished she knew what to do to make her feel better.

Because really, it didn't matter much to Theta what the next course of action was; she just wanted to do whatever would make Yaz feel better. 

But she didn't know what that was. 

And she didn't quite know how to ask. 

Yaz stops at the door of her apartment, hesitating, and Theta does the same.

Eventually, she phrases the question the best she knows how;

"What do you want to do now?" 

Yaz is silent for a moment. Long enough to get Theta rambling. 

"Do you want to come over? Or I could come over to your place, if that's better. If you don't want to be alone, I mean. I know I'm not the best person to talk to about things like this but-"

"It's okay, Theta." Yaz interrupts her, and she sounds _tired_. "I'm used to it."

"That doesn't make it okay. That makes it _worse_."

Yaz takes a deep breath. Eventually, she gives Theta an almost-nod of agreement. "Yeah. But I'm fine. I think I'll just go to bed. Bill should be home, so I won't be alone. Don't worry."

Theta takes a moment to study Yaz's expression, trying to make sure she really was as fine as she claimed to be. Theta wasn't convinced.

"Okay. Call me if you need anything." She says, and then, with a weak smile, adds: "Or you can come over anytime. The door should let you in."

Yaz smiles, but it's a bit hollow; it doesn't reach her eyes. "The magic door."

"The magic door." Theta agrees quietly with a nod. 

Then she goes back to her own apartment, and tries to get some sleep before her annoyingly-early alarm goes off. 

She does manage to fall asleep eventually, but it's constantly undermined by waiting for her phone to ring, just in case Yaz needs her. 


	19. Don't trust a song that's flawless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amy cleans out their fridge.

Amy is cleaning out their fridge. 

And Theta is sitting on the counter, despite multiple commands to get down. 

Amy has been piling things that had gone bad on the counter next to her, and she was half expecting Theta to knock them all over at any given moment, like a cat.

Also like a cat, Theta needs to occasionally be swatted away when she tries to eat something hazardous. 

Amy had made the mistake of leaving Theta unsupervised for one second (ONE SECOND!) during this process, and she had ended up finding a mystery block of _something_ in the back of the fridge, and like the feral little gremlin that she was, had _tasted_ it to figure out what it was, how bad it was, and could it be used for something. 

Horrified, Amy watches her chew the thing that looked like yeast but definitely had not originally been yeast. Amy's best guess was that it might have been some sort of a cheese, maybe a year ago. 

"Well?" She asks, carefully, despite partially not even wanting to find out what the hell was going on inside her roommate's head at the moment. 

"I have no idea what this is." She answers, with a surprisingly delighted tone of voice. 

Amy makes a disgusted face at her. (Or, well, more disgusted. Pretty sure disgust was now her permanent state of being).

"How was it?"

"Terrible."

Theta goes in to take another bite.

"Don't eat _more_ of it!" Amy screeches, and tries to swat the thing away from her roommate.

Theta eats the rest of the thing. 

Amy stares at her.

"I don't know how you have not died of food poisoning yet."

Theta ignores her.

"What's this?" She inspects the other things on the table, picking up some faded package. 

"DO NOT TOUCH THAT!" 

Amy hauls the entire pile of things out of Theta's reach. "Don't you have better things to do?" She asks, mostly rhetorically.

"Nope."

Amy sighs, and leans down to look into the fridge again, and pulling out a carton of milk that had been open for _far_ too long. 

Really, if she had been smart, she would have done this when Theta was at work and not here to interfere. 

"Can't you go bug Yaz or something?" Amy asks, and really, this is mostly rhetorical, too. 

Theta is quiet, and uncharacteristically still. Amy notices, of course; they had lived together long enough for her to get a pretty good idea of what was normal for Theta and what wasn't. Quiet and still? Not normal.

She stands up straight again, pulls her head out of the fridge, and turns to look at Theta.

"What happened?" She asks, with the voice of someone who knows _something_ obviously happened.

Theta is quiet for a long, heavy moment.

"I punched a guy."

"You _punched a guy_?"

"Just a little bit. He deserved it." She's avoiding Amy's gaze, and instead, fidgeting with her fingers.

Amy stares at her. "And?"

"And, I'm-" Theta takes a deep breath, and focuses on staring at her hands. "I'm not sure if Yaz wants to be around me, right now."

Amy studies her for a moment. "Because you punched a guy?"

Theta doesn't answer.

"You said he deserved it." Amy points out, leaning to the door of the fridge.

"He did."

Amy takes a deep breath. She knew Theta had a colorful, and at times violent past, but she didn't really know the details. Theta didn't talk about it much, only revealing bits and pieces here and there, and usually veiled with half-truths and fake confidence. She had mentioned being in the foster system and running away and getting into a lot of fights when she was younger, so really, this wasn't surprising. Or at least it shouldn't have been. 

Sure, she had seen Theta get into _verbal_ fights more than once, but never physical ones. 

Now, Theta looks like there's a heavy, emotional storm cloud hanging over her head. And it seemed to weigh her down, somehow.

Sometimes, Theta's carefully-guarded shell cracked, a little bit, and on purpose or not, she let her emotions show.

This was one of those times.

And Amy wasn't really sure what she should do about it. Theta looked _fragile_ like this, and smaller than she really was. Theta _was_ small, but somehow her usual confidence always made her look taller than she actually was.

But now she just looked small. 

"She likes you." Amy says, after a moment. "I don't think that'll change because she saw you punch someone. Especially if he deserved it."

Theta turns to look at her, and she looks _tired_. 

"If you saw Rory beat someone up, would you still like him?"

Amy raises a brow at her. "I saw him punch a nazi once." She says, "It was hot." 

Theta takes a deep breath. 

Then, she buries her head in her hands. 

"I don't like that she saw me like that." She says after a moment, quietly. "I would've done more than punch him if Yaz hadn't pulled me away." 

Amy doesn't quite know what to say to that, so she settles on putting her hand on Theta's shoulder, instead. 

"You said he deserved it." Amy says again, trying to get her to feel better. "I'm sure Yaz agrees about that."

Theta hums quietly. 

"It's not just that I punched him. I don't regret it, I really do think he deserved it. That's not the problem." She explains, quietly, after a small, heavy silence. "The problem is that I slipped into that mindset so easily. I didn't even _think_ before I punched him, it was a reflex." 

Amy takes a deep breath, and Theta continues;

"I just don't want her to think I'm like that."

"Like what?"

Theta takes a moment to answer, and when she does, her voice is quiet. "Violent."

Amy rolls her eyes, even though Theta can't see it. "She's not going to think that just because you punched someone."

Theta doesn't answer. 

"I'm sure she doesn't think that." Amy tries to reassure her. "Besides, didn't _she_ threaten to punch that one guy who cheated on his girlfriend that one time?"

It doesn't seem to help much. Theta stays quiet and still, slumped over on the counter.

So Amy tries a more hands-on approach;

"Do you want to watch a really bad sci-fi movie?"


	20. Not beyond saving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theta runs.

Theta deals with her emotions the only way she knows how;

She pretends they're not there and she goes for a run. 

(The fact that Amy had watched a movie with her and let her rant about the scientific inaccuracy also helped, a little. But it still felt good to actually go out and run; trick her body into thinking she was physically running away from her problems. It was a nice little evolutionary oddity).

She runs her usual route, a trail close to campus. The weather is nice, a bit cloudy, and she has her running playlist on, and for a brief moment, her thoughts are mostly focused on the pounding of her feet against the ground and measuring her breaths, in, and out. 

It's a pretty good distraction. 

It leaves her breathless, sweaty, and with her heart racing, but it's a pretty good distraction. A way to get out of her head. She doesn't go on runs as regularly as she probably should, so it's a bit hard on her lungs, but the burn of it is a decent distraction, too. 

Of course, Theta's mind is a difficult thing to run away from, and she isn't able to ignore her thoughts for long. Her brain has a way of looping back around to her past, and her guilt, and Yaz. All the things she was trying _not_ to think about. 

She was worried about Yaz, and she was worried about _how_ worried she was about Yaz. And it made her feel like all the blood in her veins was starting to evaporate.

Or maybe that was just the exhaustion of running.

She ignores it, and keeps running. She's not sure how long she's going to run - she doesn't have a plan - but she figures she'll just do it for as long as she feels like it. And it doesn't feel like she'll run out of energy any time soon. So she runs, and focuses on staring at the ground in front of her, and measuring her breathing, counting her steps in fours just to have something to concentrate on. Trying her best to avoid having any coherent thoughts. 

And then someone interrupts her.

"Did you collect all the Chaos Emeralds or something?"

Theta stops, and looks up, and almost falls over in the process, when the momentum of her body tries to pull her to the opposite direction. 

It's Ryan.

"What?" She breathes out, confused, pulling out her headphones, her chest heaving. 

He walks closer to her, and shrugs. "You're zooming around like Super Sonic." He explains. "You know. Chaos Emeralds?" He makes a vague hand gesture, and Theta nods in understanding, the metaphor slowly catching up with her still-racing mind.

"Eh, no. Still looking." She answers, with a brush of her hand. 

"So you're just trying to break a record of some sort for fun, then?"

"Nah, just running." She answers, stretching out her back and trying to catch her breath. "It's good for my lungs, you know, and my muscles, after being at work all day."

That technically wasn't a lie. The factory work could be a bit rough on her muscles, especially if she was working the assembly line, and moving around _did_ help with that. It just wasn't the reason she was running now. 

"Yeah, I get that." Ryan nods. "My legs used to get super sore when I started at the warehouse." Then, he scrunches up his face in disgust. "Never took up running. Hate it. I play basketball though." 

He motions to somewhere behind him, and Theta looks over, nodding. There are other people playing basketball over there, every now and then jumping higher than what looked like should be humanly possible.

"Good. Exercise. Healthy." Theta says, and it feels dumb, but really, she doesn't know what else to say.

Ryan nods. 

And then he leans back.

He looks Theta over, like he's studying her. "Are you alright?" He asks, sounding a little confused. A little concerned.

"Yeah." She answers. "I'm fine. Super."

It sounds unconvincing even to her own ears, and for a moment, she quietly hopes she had put a bit more effort to the lie. She's pretty sure she looks like a _wreck_ , sweaty and tired and trying to avoid eye contact, and for a moment she wonders if just flat-out running away from this situation too was an option. 

Technically, she _could_ just sprint and run away right now. But that probably wouldn't do much to convince Ryan than she was alright. 

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ryan asks, and that's the _last_ thing she wants. 

He can probably see it in the way she leans back and furrows her eyes a bit.

"Do you want to come over to my place and play video games?" He tries again, after a moment. 

That gets a tired smile out of Theta, and she relaxes a little. 

"Do you mind if I go home and shower first?" She answers.

"Sure, yeah, no problem." Ryan shrugs. 

  
When Theta gets to his apartment, Ryan has ordered food and set up the gaming system in the living room. 

His roommate is out, and the apartment is quiet. The layout is the same as in her flat, which isn't surprising, really, but it feels a little weird. They have a lot less stuff than Theta and Amy, and it's weird to see someone else's things in a space that's identical to your home.

Ryan lets her pick out the game, and then spends a moment rambling about the controls and explaining what they were supposed to do. Theta gets the hang of it pretty quickly, really, but she lets Ryan explain it anyways. Listening to him talk was comforting, in a way; another distraction to add to her list. 

And they play, and eat chips, and Theta drinks enough Coke for the amount of caffeine to make her feel like she's vibrating, which, she thinks, probably gives her an advantage on all the games, and they talk and joke and it's _nice_.

And eventually, she falls asleep on his couch. 

(Not before texting Amy to tell her where she was. She didn't want her to worry). 

The next morning, Theta feels like she's hungover, which is strange, and a little bit annoying. Ryan's couch is very comfortable, but all her muscles still ache, and she only drank Coke, which shouldn't give anyone a hangover. She's pretty sure about that. But maybe the running and staying up late and staring at flashing lights on a screen and consuming your body weight in caffeine and sugar explained some of it.

She wakes up to someone - presumably Ryan's roommate - talking in a semi-hushed voice. She only catches the end of the sentence;

"-You've got a girl in here!" 

"That's just Theta. She doesn't count." Ryan answers, in an equally not-exactly-quiet whisper.

"That's true. I don't." Theta mumbles, joining into the conversation without opening her eyes.

The other two are silent, and she can practically feel them looking at her. 

She flings herself to a somewhat upright position, and bunches up the blanket that had appeared over her at some point during the night. It was colorful and smelled distantly of lavender, and it was warm, and she leaves it in a crumbled up pile in her lap. Both boys are in the kitchen, eating breakfast, and looking at her.

"Hello." The boy who is presumably Ryan's roommate says, waving his hand, and looking a little awkward.

"Morning." Ryan says, and then nods towards the other boy. "This is my roommate, Tibo."

"Hi." Theta smiles, now also feeling a little awkward - she felt like it was radiating off of Tibo, affecting her by osmosis, and she was starting to feel like maybe she shouldn't be there. She _was_ in their home, after all. "Sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep." She adds, apologetically,

"Don't worry about it." Ryan says, shrugging, and stirring a cup of what Theta was hoping to be coffee. "You're my mate. It's no trouble."

Theta stretches a little, and her back makes a slightly sickening _crack_ sound. 

"Do you want breakfast?" Ryan asks, and Theta smiles again, a little hopeful.

"Do you have coffee?"

"Yeah." 

Theta grins.

Tibo is starting to seem a little less anxious by the time Theta joins them in the kitchen. He's doing something on his phone, and talking about something possibly sports-related with Ryan (Theta wasn't really paying attention at this point, because she gets a very large cup of coffee, which does wonders for her fake hangover, and it's warming her hands quite nicely, and about 70% of the sports terminology goes right over her head anyways, so she couldn't accurately follow the conversation even if she tried). 

But as she's sitting there in the hazy morning light surrounded by the smell of coffee and friendly banter, her brain is remarkably quiet. 


	21. Those nights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> emotions, halloween, and movie night.

Theta shows up at Yaz's door early in the morning, before classes start, holding a brown paper bag stamped with the logo of that one cafe they both liked. 

Yaz is a little surprised - Theta wasn't an early morning person, not voluntarily, anyways, and Yaz hadn't been expecting her to show up. The way they left things off the last time they saw each other (weird, and a little uncomfortable) had gotten her anxious over-thinking brain to come up with all kinds of theories on where things would go from here. 

Most of them bad.

But Theta acts as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and offers her a cup of tea and a still-warm banana muffin, and a soft smile. 

And Yaz lets her in (of course, of course she does) and they eat breakfast together. 

After a while, Bill joins them, in her colorful pyjamas, recounting the weird dream she had. Theta is thoroughly enjoying it, listening intently and analyzing the dream with a smile on her face. And in the soft morning sunlight, Yaz feels like this is exactly like it should be. Like this is exactly _where_ they should be.

Life slowly settles into normalcy again, and her feelings settle into a steady background hum. Yaz studies and Theta walks her to her classes, even though she now knows where all the buildings are. Bill and Ryan somehow manage to turn Mario Kart into a drinking game, which is both pretty difficult and extremely entertaining to watch. Theta works on the weekends, and Amy hosts a study group, despite them all studying different things. And life goes on, in a comforting, ordinary, uneventful fashion.

And it creeps up on Yaz;

How nice it feels. To be a part of something like this.

She wasn't used to feeling like this around other people, but now that she knew what it was like she wanted nothing more than to hold onto the feeling and never let go. 

It still felt unsteady, somehow. Like in the back of her mind, she was scared that someone would come and take this away from her.

Which was silly, she knew that, but it didn't make the feeling any less real. 

She was scared that this newfound goodness would somehow be taken away from her. She didn't _trust_ it.

Mostly, she ignored this feeling and just went along with whatever Theta and her friends came up with. It was the easiest option.

Currently, it meant that she was sitting in their kitchen, watching Amy line her eyes with impressive precision.

It was almost Halloween, and the campus was bustling with life. People had been dressing up all week, the amount of parties going on at any given moment increased exponentially the closer they got to the weekend, and everyone was looking forward to going out on Halloween night.

Well, everyone except for Theta.

Amy and Clara were getting ready in their costumes, and Yaz had sort of just stayed there after their study group which, these days, seemed to involve less and less studying each time and was mostly just them hanging out, really.

(Not that she was complaining).

"Not a fan of night clubs." Theta explains with half a shrug. "Too loud. Flashy lights. Sticky floors. Too many people and _everyone's_ drunk."

"Too loud, she says." Amy teases lightly . "You blast your music on full volume any given chance."

"That's different." Theta points out, turning to look at her. "I'm in _charge_ of that music."

"So what you're saying is, you'd go with us if you could be the DJ?"

Amy had already given up on trying to get her to come clubbing with them. She just happened to like light-hearted teasing, and, really, she just didn't want Theta sitting at home all night alone, moping. Clara might have asked her to join them a few more times were she in the room, but she was currently in the bathroom, doing something to her face that apparently required a very large 3-way mirror.

Theta tilts her head a little, as if considering this. "No. Still too many people and sticky floors." 

Amy rolls her eyes, and Theta makes a face right back. "I'm going to watch a few really bad movies, stuff my face with unhealthy snacks, and stay up way too late. Besides, I promised to help Ryan with a Halloween Youtube video. We're gonna try to get abducted by aliens."

Amy raises an eyebrow slowly. "How do you _try_ to get abducted by aliens?"

"I have some theories." 

Amy sighs, adjusting her costume in front of the mirror. "Of course you do."

Then she turns around, shaking out her hair, and looks directly at Yaz, who really hadn't been a part of this conversation at all earlier and had just been observing it from the sidelines.

"You're gonna stay for her weird little movie night, right?" Amy asks, and Yaz just blinks at her in surprise. 

"Come on, you're both going to sit in your crappy little apartments alone, watching some stupid movies? That's just sad! At least sit in the _same_ crappy little apartment, it's _way_ more fun that way." Amy groans, and Yaz turns to look at Theta, who looks back at her, face unreadable.

They stare at each other in silence for a bit.

"Does it have to be _bad_ movies?" Yaz asks after a moment, furrowing her brows a bit.

Theta breathes out. "Do you know any good Halloween movies?"

They proceed to stare at each other for a moment, as Yaz tries to rack her brain for any actually good Halloween movies she'd seen. 

(There were none. She had a habit of falling asleep in the middle of movies, so really, there weren't that many movies she could confidently claim were good).

"Great!" Amy exclaims, maybe a little bit too enthusiastically. "So you'll have a movie night! We won't be back until late and I'll probably go to Rory's after. You'll have the place to yourselves!" She continues, with a very poorly veiled wink, disappearing towards the bathroom before either of them can answer.

"I do have plans for attempted alien abduction after midnight, though." Theta points out, looking at Yaz, and the way she says it makes it sound like she was talking about a dentist appointment or maybe a trip to the grocery store. "You're welcome to join, though."

"No thanks." 

Theta has a whole list of movies planned out, and really, Yaz doesn't care that much _what_ they're watching, to be honest. But she lets Theta explain her movie choices anyways (there is a fifteen-minute rant about the Alien franchise that goes entirely over Yaz's head, but she nods along and does her best to look like she understands what Theta is saying).

Their selection of junk food is impressive, and before Amy and Clara leave, both of them steal some candy to stuff into their pockets. This leads to Theta throwing candy at them, which is really counter-intuitive, since she was claiming to be trying to keep them from taking her candy, but Yaz lets it slide without saying anything. 

And then they both settle to the couch, and Theta starts up the first movie.

And Yaz doesn't really even follow the plot - Theta was arguing with it, though, commenting something every few minutes - and Yaz tries her best to follow, but unfortunately, her brain is currently occupied with other things, because somehow she's ended up _very_ close to Theta, she's pretty much leaning to her, their sides pressed together. As Theta makes a frantic hand gesture towards the TV, Yaz can _feel_ the motion in her rib cage. 

And then she realizes that their thighs are pressed together, too, and she can feel Theta breathing, and after that, she _really_ doesn't focus on the movie.

She tries, she really does, but her skin is tingling at every point of contact, and she has to focus on keeping her breathing steady, and the next time Theta comments on something going on with the movie, her voice is quiet and Yaz can _feel_ her speak, and _when did her head end up on Theta's shoulder?_

It doesn't take long for Yaz to fall asleep, after that.

At some point, half-asleep and half-awake, she realizes that Theta has stopped moving, and there is a comforting weight wrapped around her shoulders. 


End file.
